The East flamed roseate. The air was cold, nimble. Some of the
sage-brush bore a thin rim of frost. The herd, aroused, the dew
glistening on flank and horn, were chewing the first cud of the day, and
in twos and threes moving toward the water-hole for the morning's drink.
Far off toward the camp the breakfast fire sent a shaft of blue smoke
straight into the moveless air. A jack-rabbit, with erect ears, limped
from the sage-brush just out of pistol-shot and regarded us a moment,
his nose wrinkling and trembling. By the time that Bunt and I, putting
our ponies to a canter, had pulled up by the camp of the Bar-circle-Z
outfit, another day had begun in Idaho.




A MEMORANDUM OF SUDDEN DEATH


The manuscript of the account that follows belongs to a harness-maker in
Albuquerque, Juan Tejada by name, and he is welcome to whatever of
advertisement this notice may bring him. He is a good fellow, and his
patented martingale for stage horses may be recommended. I understand he
got the manuscript from a man named Bass, or possibly Bass left it with
him for safe-keeping. I know that Tejada has some things of Bass's
now--things that Bass left with him last November: a mess-kit, a lantern
and a broken theodolite--a whole saddle-box full of contraptions. I
forgot to ask Tejada how Bass got the manuscript, and I wish I had done
so now, for the finding of it might be a story itself. The probabilities
are that Bass simply picked it up page by page off the desert, blown
about the spot where the fight occurred and at some little distance from
the bodies. Bass, I am told, is a bone-gatherer by profession, and one