“‘Don’t you remember when we were in Italy,’ said one of the girls, trying to refresh her memory.

“’Oh, yes, now I remember; that’s where I bought you girls such nice long red stockings.’

“The girls suddenly remembered some duty about the house that required their immediate attention, and Jed says that he looked out of the window.”

“So you think I’ve lost my number, do you?” commented Edwards, as he lay on his back and fondly patted a comfortable stomach.

“Well, possibly I have, but it’s some consolation to remember that that very good woman that you’re slandering used to give me the glad hand and cut the pie large when I called.  I may be out of the game, but I’d take a chance yet if I were present; that’s what!”

They were singing over at one of the wagons across the draw, and after the song ended, Bradshaw asked, “What ever became of Raneka Bill Hunter?”

“Oh, he’s drifting about,” said Edwards.  “Mouse here can tell you about him.  They’re old college chums.”

“Raneka was working for the ‘-BQ’ people last summer,” said Mouse, “but was discharged for hanging a horse, or rather he discharged himself.  It seems that some one took a fancy to a horse in his mount.  The last man to buy into an outfit that way always gets all the bad horses for his string.  As Raneka was a new man there, the result was that some excuse was given him to change, and they rung in a spoilt horse on him in changing.  Being new that way, he wasn’t on to the horses.  The first time he tried to saddle this new horse he showed up bad.  The horse trotted up to him when the rope fell on his neck, reared up nicely and playfully, and threw out his forefeet, stripping the three upper buttons off Bill’s vest pattern.  Bill never said a word about his intentions, but tied him to the corral fence and saddled up his own private horse.  There were several men around camp, but they said nothing, being a party to the deal, though they noticed Bill riding away with the spoilt horse.  He took him down on the creek about a mile from camp and hung him.

“How did he do it?  Why, there was a big cottonwood grew on a bluff bank of the creek.  One limb hung out over the bluff, over the bed of the creek.  He left the running noose on the horse’s neck, climbed out on this overhanging limb, taking the rope through a fork directly over the water.  He then climbed down and snubbed the free end of the rope to a small tree, and began taking in his slack.  When the rope began to choke the horse, he reared and plunged, throwing himself over the bluff.  That settled his ever hurting any one.  He was hung higher than Haman.  Bill never went back to the camp, but struck out for other quarters.  There was a month’s wages coming to him, but he would get that later or they might keep it.  Life had charms for an old-timer like Bill, and he didn’t hanker for any reputation as a broncho-buster.  It generally takes a verdant to pine for such honors.