“Along about dark, I camped for the night under a big, bare-faced cliff that was about as homelike and inviting as a charitable institution, and made a bluff at sleeping and cussed my bum luck in a way that wasn’t any bluff.  At sun-up I rose and mooched on.”  His cigarette needed another match and he searched his pockets for one.

“What about the—­whatever it was you started to tell me?” urged Branciforte, grown impatient.

Andy looked him over calmly.  “You’ve lived in ignorance for about thirty years or so—­giving a rough guess at your age; I reckon you can stand another five minutes.  As I was saying, I wandered around like a dogy when it’s first turned loose on the range and is trying to find the old, familiar barn-yard and the skim-milk bucket.  And like the dogy, I didn’t run across anything that looked natural or inviting.  All that day I perambulated over them hills, and I will say I wasn’t enjoying the stroll none.  You’re right when you say things can happen, out here.  There’s some things it’s just as well they don’t happen too frequent, and getting lost and afoot in the Bad-lands is one.

“That afternoon I dragged myself up to the edge of a deep coulee and looked over to see if there was any way of getting down.  There was a bright green streak down there that couldn’t mean nothing but water, at that time of year; this was last fall.  And over beyond, I could see the river that I’d went and lost.  I looked and looked, but the walls looked straight as a Boston’s man’s pedigree.  And then the sun come out from behind a cloud and lit up a spot that made me forget for a minute that I was thirsty as a dog and near starved besides.

“I was looking down on the ruins—­and yet it was near perfect—­of an old castle.  Every stone stood out that clear and distinct I could have counted ’em.  There was a tower at one end, partly fell to pieces but yet enough left to easy tell what it was.  I could see it had kinda loop-holes in it.  There was an open place where I took it the main entrance had used to be; what I’d call the official entrance.  But there was other entrances besides, and some of ’em was made by time and hard weather.  There was what looked like awhat-you-may-call-’em—­ a ditch thing, yuh mind, running around my side of it, and a bridge business.  Uh course, it was all needing repairs bad, and part of it yuh needed to use your imagination on.  I laid there for quite a spell looking it over and wondering how the dickens it come to be way down there.  It didn’t look to me like it ought to be there at all, but in a school geography or a history where the chapter is on historic and prehistoric hangouts uh the heathen.”

“The deuce!  A castle in the Bad-lands!” ejaculated Branciforte.