"Sure, we didn't," said Jim. "Leastways, your yarns is told about places
so far away that we has t' take 'em as true, not knowin' any one to call
on for t' verify 'em."

"Well, if they're made up, you c'n make up just as good ones
yourselves," said Buck, and he lapsed into silence.

"Your tale interests me strangely," said Bill. "Get to it. You started
fine."

"He didn't start at all," Jim said.

"That's what Bill means," explained Shorty.

"Aw, let him tell th' story," said Charlie Bassett. "You fellers that
ain't liars yourselves is all jealous."

Whitey would have thought that the tale was to go untold had he not
known that every story of Buck's met with this sort of reception, and
that nothing short of an earthquake could keep him from talking.

"Well, just to show you fellers you can't queer me, I _will_ tell about
this here lynchin'," Buck declared, after a pause.

"'Twas back in Wyomin', 'bout five years ago," Buck began, "an' I was
workin' for the Lazy I. An' rustlers was good an' plenty. An' every one
knows that there ain't on easier brand to cover up than a lazy I. It was
got up by old man Innes, what owned th' ranch, an' lived in Boston, an'
was so honest an' unsuspectin' that he'd 'a' trusted Slim, here, with a
lead nickel."