to me: 'You ain't astride nothin' but a little roan goat that only
knows cows; but you got the chancet of your life, Tom Collins, to
make a killin'. That's right!'

"That is a twisty gulch--I'll show it to you while we're up here
prospectin'--and all I could hear was old Blackie's hoofs
clattering, and once in a while he'd whistle. He's got a neigh like
a steam whistle.

"Well," pursued the cowboy, "all of a sudden the noise stopped. I
couldn't hear his hoofs nor his voice. And when I got around the
next turn that give me a sight of the complete gulch, clear to the
pocket, there wasn't no hawse at all. He'd just gone up in smoke,
or something. That's what!"

"What became of the horse?" cried Bess Harley.

"There's some joke in it," Rhoda said doubtfully.

"Honest to pickles!" said the cowpuncher earnestly, "I was scared
blue myself. I ain't no more superstitious than the next feller.
But that certainly got me.

"I rid back to the mouth of the gulch, lookin' all the way, and
never seen a hoof print to show me where he'd lighted out for. He
couldn't climb the sides of the gulch. And he didn't hide out on me
and let me go back and then dodge out o' the gulch.

"No, sir! There he was one minute, then the next he wasn't there at
all. I got back to the mouth of the gulch, and there I seen that