We made camp on the outskirts of the timber, and at early dusk great flocks of pigeons began to arrive at their roosting place.  We only had four shotguns, and, dividing into pairs, we entered the roost shortly after dark.  Glenn Gallup fell to me as my pardner.  I carried the gunny sack for the birds, not caring for a gun in such unfair shooting.  The flights continued to arrive for fully an hour after we entered the roost, and in half a dozen shots we bagged over fifty birds.  Remembering the admonition of Uncle Lance, Gallup refused to kill more, and we sat down and listened to the rumbling noises of the grove.  There was a constant chattering of the pigeons, and as they settled in great flights in the trees overhead, whipping the branches with their wings in search of footing, they frequently fell to the ground at our feet.

Gallup and I returned to camp early.  Before we had skinned our kill the others had all come in, disgusted with the ease with which they had filled their bags.  We soon had two pots filled and on the fire parboiling, while Tiburcio lined two ovens with pastry, all ready for the baking.  In a short time two horsemen, attracted by our fire, crossed the river below our camp and rode up.

“Hello, Uncle Lance,” lustily shouted one of them, as he dismounted.  “It’s you, is it, that’s shooting my pigeons?  All right, sir, I’ll stay all night and help you eat them.  I had figured on riding back to the Frio to-night, but I’ve changed my mind.  Got any horse hobbles here?” The two men, George Nathan and Hugh Trotter, were accommodated with hobbles, and after an exchange of commonplace news of the country, we settled down to story-telling.  Trotter was a convivial acquaintance of Aaron Scales, quite a vagabond and consequently a story-teller.  After Trotter had narrated a late dream, Scales unlimbered and told one of his own.

“I remember a dream I had several years ago, and the only way I can account for it was, I had been drinking more or less during the day.  I dreamt I was making a long ride across a dreary desert, and towards night it threatened a bad storm.  I began to look around for some shelter.  I could just see the tops of a clump of trees beyond a hill, and rode hard to get to them, thinking that there might be a house amongst them.  How I did ride!  But I certainly must have had a poor horse, for I never seemed to get any nearer that timber.  I rode and rode, but all this time, hours and hours it seemed, and the storm gathering and scattering raindrops falling, the timber seemed scarcely any nearer.

“At last I managed to reach the crest of the hill.  Well, sir, there wasn’t a tree in sight, only, under the brow of the hill, a deserted adobe jacal, and I rode for that, picketed my horse and went in.  The jacal had a thatched roof with several large holes in it, and in the fireplace burned a roaring fire.  That was some strange, but I didn’t mind it and I was warming my hands before the fire and congratulating myself on my good luck, when a large black cat sprang from the outside into an open window, and said:  ’Pardner, it looks like a bad night outside.’