CHAPTER

Dedication
some cowboy facts
I. The dismissal of silver Phil
II.  Colonel Sterett’s panther hunt
III.  How faro Nell dealt bank
IV.  How the raven died
V. The queerness of Dave Tutt
VI.  With the Apache’s compliments
VII.  The Mills of savage gods
VIII.  Tom and Jerry; wheelers
IX.  The influence of faro Nell
X. The ghost of the bar-B-8
XI.  Tucson Jennie’s correction
XII.  Bill Connors of the Osages
XIII.  When Tutt first saw Tucson
XIV.  The troubles of Dan Boggs
XV.  Bowlegs and Major Ben
XVI.  Toad Allen’s elopement
XVII.  The clients of Aaron green
XVIII.  Colonel Sterett’s marvels
XIX.  The luck of Hardrobe
XX.  Long ago on the Rio Grande
XXI.  Colonel coyote Clubbs

To

William Greene Sterett

this volume is

inscribed.

NEW YORK CITY,

August 1, 1902

My dear Sterett:—­

In offering this book to you I might have advantage of the occasion to express my friendship and declare how high I hold you as a journalist and a man.  Or I might speak of those years at Washington when in the gallery we worked shoulder to shoulder; I might recall to you the wit of Hannum, or remind you of the darkling Barrett, the mighty Decker, the excellent Cohen, the vivid Brown, the imaginative Miller, the volatile Angus, the epigrammatic Merrick, the quietly satirical Splain, Rouzer the earnest, Boynton the energetic, Carson the eminent, and Dunnell, famous for a bitter, frank integrity.  I might remember that day when the gifted Fanciulli, with no more delicate inspiration than crackers, onions, and cheese, and no more splendid conservatory than Shoemaker’s, wrote, played and consecrated to you his famous “Lone Star March” wherewith he so disquieted the public present of the next concert in the White House grounds.  Or I might hark back to the campaign of ’92, when together we struggled against national politics as evinced in the city of New York; I might repaint that election night when, with one hundred thousand whirling dervishes of democracy in Madison Square, dancing dances, and singing songs of victory, we undertook through the hubbub to send from the “Twenty-third street telegraph office” half-hourly bulletins to our papers in the West; how you, accompanied of the dignified Richard Bright, went often to the Fifth Avenue Hotel; and how at last you dictated your bulletins—­a sort of triumphant blank verse, they were—­as Homeric of spirit as lofty of phrase—­to me, who caught them as they came from your lips, losing none of their fire, and so flashed them all burning into Texas, far away.  But of what avail would be such recount?  Distance separates us and time has come between.  Those are the old years, these are the new, with newer years beyond.  Life like