each other to get up to the ticket wagon. Then the boys would
wink at each other, and tap their foreheads with their fingers,
and look at Pa as though they expected he would break out
violently insane any minute.

Finally we got up on a high ridge, and a beautiful, fertile valley
was unfolded to our view, and Bill, the cowboy who had had his
herd of steers eaten by the dinosaurus, said that was the place,
and he began to shiver like he had the ague. He said he wouldn't
go any farther without another hundred dollars, and Pa asked the
other cowboys if they were afraid, too, and they said they were a
little scared, but for another hundred dollars they would forget
it, forget their families, and go down into the death valley.

Pa paid them the money, and we went down into the valley, and rode
along, expecting to jump a flock of dinosauruses any minute, but
the valley was as still as death, and Pa said to Bill: "Why don't
you bring on your dinosauruses," and Bill said he guessed by the
time we got up to the far end of the valley we would see something
that would make us stand without hitching.

We went on towards where the valley came to a point where there
seemed to be a hole in the side of the mountain, when all of a
sudden four or five gun shots were heard, and four of our horses
dropped dead in their tracks, and about a dozen men come out of
the hole in the wall and told us to hold up our hands, and when we
did so they took our guns away and told us to come in out of the wet.

[Illustration: We Were Captured by the Curry's Gang.]