“Last winter when Bill was riding the chuck line, he ran up against a new experience.  It seems that some newcomer bought a range over on Black Bear.  This new man sought to set at defiance the customs of the range.  It was currently reported that he had refused to invite people to stay for dinner, and preferred that no one would ask for a night’s lodging, even in winter.  This was the gossip of the camps for miles around, so Bill and some juniper of a pardner thought they would make a call on him and see how it was.  They made it a point to reach his camp shortly after noon.  They met the owner just coming out of the dug-out as they rode up.  They exchanged the compliments of the hour, when the new man turned and locked the door of the dug-out with a padlock.  Bill sparred around the main question, but finally asked if it was too late to get dinner, and was very politely informed that dinner was over.  This latter information was, however, qualified with a profusion of regrets.  After a confession of a hard ride made that morning from a camp many miles distant, Bill asked the chance to remain over night.  Again the travelers were met with serious regrets, as no one would be at camp that night, business calling the owner away; he was just starting then.  The cowman led out his horse, and after mounting and expressing for the last time his sincere regrets that he could not extend to them the hospitalities of his camp, rode away.

“Bill and his pardner moseyed in an opposite direction a short distance and held a parley.  Bill was so nonplussed at the reception that it took him some little time to collect his thoughts.  When it thoroughly dawned on him that the courtesies of the range had been trampled under foot by a rank newcomer and himself snubbed, he was aroused to action.

“‘Let’s go back,’ said Bill to his pardner, ’and at least leave our card.  He might not like it if we didn’t.’

“They went back and dismounted about ten steps from the door.  They shot every cartridge they both had, over a hundred between them, through the door, fastened a card with their correct names on it, and rode away.  One of the boys that was working there, but was absent at the time, says there was a number of canned tomato and corn crates ranked up at the rear of the dug-out, in range with the door.  This lad says that it looked as if they had a special grievance against those canned goods, for they were riddled with lead.  That fellow lost enough by that act to have fed all the chuck-line men that would bother him in a year.

“Raneka made it a rule,” continued Mouse, “to go down and visit the Cheyennes every winter, sometimes staying a month.  He could make a good stagger at speaking their tongue, so that together with his knowledge of the Spanish and the sign language he could converse with them readily.  He was perfectly at home with them, and they all liked him.  When he used to let his hair grow long, he looked like an