[Originally published in _Everybody's Magazine_, June, 1903.]


Without knowing it, Old Bill Bascom had the honor of being overtaken by
fate the same day with the Marquis of Borodale.

The Marquis lived in Regent Square, London. Old Bill lived on Limping
Doe Creek, Hardeman County, Texas. The cataclysm that engulfed the
Marquis took the form of a bursting bubble known as the Central and
South American Mahogany and Caoutchouc Monopoly. Old Bill's Nemesis was
in the no less perilous shape of a band of civilized Indian cattle
thieves from the Territory who ran off his entire herd of four hundred
head, and shot old Bill dead as he trailed after them. To even up the
consequences of the two catastrophes, the Marquis, as soon as he found
that all he possessed would pay only fifteen shillings on the pound of
his indebtedness, shot himself.

Old Bill left a family of six motherless sons and daughters, who found
themselves without even a red steer left to eat, or a red cent to buy
one with.

The Marquis left one son, a young man, who had come to the States and
established a large and well-stocked ranch in the Panhandle of Texas.
When this young man learned the news he mounted his pony and rode to
town. There he placed everything he owned except his horse, saddle,
Winchester, and fifteen dollars in his pockets, in the hands of his
lawyers, with instructions to sell and forward the proceeds to London to
be applied upon the payment of his father's debts. Then he mounted his
pony and rode southward.