“’"Thar hangs fame!” says Easy Aaron; “thar hangs my chance of eminence!  That eloquence, wherewith my heart is freighted, an’ which would have else declar’d me the Erskine of the Brazos, is lynched with my clients.”  Then wheelin’ on Waco Anderson who strolls over, Easy Aaron demands plenty f’rocious:  “Whoever does this dastard deed?”

“’"Which this agitated sport,” observes Waco coldly to Shoestring Griffith, who comes loungin’ up likewise, “asks whoever does these yere dastard deeds!  Does you-all recall the fate, Shoestring, of the last misguided shorthorn who gives way to sech a query?  My mem’ry is never ackerate as to trifles, an’ I’m confoosed about whether he’s shot or hung or simply burned alive.”

“’"That prairie dog is hanged a lot,” says Shoestring.  “Which the boys was goin’ to burn him, but on its appearin’ that he puts the question more in ignorance than malice, they softens on second thought to that degree they merely gets a rope, adds him to the windmill with the others, an’ lets the matter drop.”

“’Easy Aaron don’t crowd his explorations further.  He can see thar’s what you-all might call a substratum of seriousness to the observations of Waco an’ Shoestring, an’ his efforts to solve the mystery that disposes of every law case he has, an’ leaves him to begin life anew, comes to a halt!

“’But it lets pore Easy Aaron out.  He borrys a hoss from the corral, packs the Texas Statootes an’ his extra shirt in the war-bags, an’ with that the only real law wolf who ever makes his lair in Yellow City, p’ints sadly no’thward an’ is seen no more.  As he’s about to ride away, Easy Aaron turns to me.  He’s sort o’ got the notion I ain’t so bad as Waco, Shoestring, an’ the rest.  “I shall never return,” says Easy Aaron, an’ he shakes his head plenty disconsolate.  “Genius has no show in Yellow City.  This outfit hangs a gent’s clients as fast as ever he’s retained an’ offers no indoocements—­opens no opportoonities, to a ambitious barrister."’”

CHAPTER XVIII

Colonel Sterett Relates Marvels.

“As I asserts frequent,” observed the Old Cattleman, the while delicately pruning a bit of wood he’d picked up on his walk, “the funds of information, gen’ral an’ speshul, which Colonel William Greene Sterett packs about would freight a eight-mule team.  It’s even money which of ’em saveys the most, him or Doc Peets.  For myself, after careful study, I inclines to the theery that Colonel Sterett’s knowledge is the widest, while Peets’s is the most exact.  Both is college gents; an’ yet they differs as to the valyoo of sech sem’naries.  The Colonel coppers colleges, while Peets plays ’em to win.

“‘Them temples of learnin’,’ says the Colonel, ’is a heap ornate; but they don’t make good.’  This is doubted by Peets.

“One evenin’ Dan Boggs, who’s allers tantalisin’ ‘round askin’ questions—­it looks like a sleepless cur’osity is proned into Dan—­ropes at Peets concernin’ this topic: