desperate as you say? I can understand this feud but I can't conceive of a community where a man will let you call him a thief."

"Well, they're Texicans, you know," explained Meshackatee glibly, "ain't supposed to have no morals, nohow. They're a cowardly bunch, too—jest look how they roped me—I never did see but one brave one. He's dead now, the rascal, but they called him One-eyed Tex—I was there when he got his name. It was over in New Mexico and he got into a shooting-scrape and the other feller plugged him through the eye. Bullet went plumb through his head and blew out part of his brains—made him feel kinder dizzy for a spell. Then he come to himself and drilled his man dead center, after which they took him to the doctor. The doctor wouldn't touch him till they told him it was Tex, and then he sewed him right up. Said a feller from Texas never would miss his brains nohow and he'd heal up and grow hair in a week.

"Well, Tex he got well, and I will say for him that there was one sure-enough brave Texan. He'd take on anybody and give 'em the first two shots and git off for self-defense. He come on over to Bowie, or I believe it was Lordsburg, but anyway[Pg 15] his reputation had preceded him. He was known to be bad, and he shore run it over them Mexicans. You couldn't kill the scoundrel and there warn't no way to stop him, until some of them Rawhides chopped his head plumb off one night and hid it out in the brush. He starved to death in about a week—but there was one brave Texican."

[Pg 15]

"But he's dead, eh?" grinned Hall, and then they both laughed while Meshackatee leered at the door.

"Ever spent much time exploring these cliff-dwellings?" he inquired, suddenly changing the subject, "well they sure are an interesting study. Supposed to have been built about a thousand years ago by the ancestors of the Aztecs or the Hopis; but let me tell you, pardner, they ain't all vanished yet—I found some, up here in a cave. I was riding along one time when I seen an old man, with his beard plumb down to his knees; and he was sitting down outside of a cliff-dwelling and crying like his heart would break.

"'What's the matter, old man?' I says, and he bursts out worse than ever.

"'My daddy whipped me!' he says, and I seen right there he was touched. He was a hundred years old if he was a day and his back-bone was sticking through like a fish's, and of course he didn't have no daddy; but I was kind of sorry, the way he took 

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