cows, but because Pa had lassoed hitching posts in his youth, with
a clothes line, with a slip noose in it, he posed among cowboys as
being an expert roper, and where did he land? In the cactus.

He was just meat for the natives to have fun with, and he has sure
been hashed up on this trip. But the worst of all was this trip
to the buffalo ranch, to secure buffaloes for the show, and if I
was in pa's place I would go into retirement, and never look a man
in the face. Pa's idea was that these buffaloes on the ranch were
just as wild as they used to be when they run at large on the
plains. When we got to the ranch at evening, Pa put in the whole
time until it was time to go to bed telling the ranchman and his
hired man what great things he had done killing wild animals, and
what dangerous places he had been in, and what bold things he had
done. He said, while the object of his visit to the ranch was to
buy a herd of buffaloes for the show, the thing he wanted to do,
above all, was to kill a buffalo bull in single-handed combat, and
have the head and horns to ornament his den, and the hide for a
lap robe, but the ranchmen would be welcome to the meat. He
asked the man who owned the ranch if he might have the privilege,
by paying for it, of killing a buffalo.

The ranchman said he would arrange it all right in the morning,
and Pa and I went to bed. After Pa got to snoring, and killing
buffaloes in his sleep, I could hear the ranchman and his helpers
planning pa's humiliation, and when I tried to tell Pa in the
morning that the crowd were stringing him he got mad at me and
asked me to mind my own business, and that is something I never
could do to save my life.