“Or I might relate how I stops over one night from Springer on my way to the Canadian at a Triangle-dot camp called Kingman.  This yere is a one-room stone house, stark an’ sullen an’ alone on the desolate plains, an’ no scenery worth namin’ but a half-grown feeble spring.  This Kingman ain’t got no windows; its door is four-inch thick of oak; an’ thar’s loopholes for rifles in each side which shows the sports who builds that edifice in the stormy long-ago is lookin’ for more trouble than comfort an’ prepares themse’fs.  The two cow-punchers I finds in charge is scared to a standstill; they allows this Kingman’s ha’nted.  They tells me how two parties who once abides thar—­father an’ son they be—­gets downed by a hold-up whose aim is pillage, an’ who comes cavortin’ along an’ butchers said fam’ly in their sleep.  The cow-punchers declar’s they hears the spooks go scatterin’ about the room as late as the night before I trails in.  I ca’ms ’em—­not bein’ subject to nerve stampedes myse’f, an’ that same midnight when the sperits comes ha’ntin’ about ag’in, I turns outen my blankets an’ lays said spectres with the butt of my mule whip—­the same when we strikes a light an’ counts ’em up bein’ a couple of kangaroo rats.  This yere would front up for a mighty thrillin’ tale if I throws myse’f loose with its reecital an’ daubs in the colour plenty vivid an’ free.

“Then thar’s the time I swings over to the K-bar-8 ranch for corn—­bein’ I’m out of said cereal—­an’ runs up on a cow gent, spurs, gun-belt, big hat an’ the full regalia, hangin’ to the limb of a cottonwood, dead as George the Third, an’ not a hundred foot from the ranch door.  An’ how inside I finds a half-dozen more cow folks, lookin’ grave an’ sayin’ nothin’; an’ the ranch manager has a bloody bandage about his for’ead, an’ another holdin’ up his left arm, half bandage an’ half sling, the toot ensemble, as Colonel Sterett calls it, showin’ sech recent war that the blood’s still wet on the cloths an’ drops on the floor as we talks.  An’ how none of us says a word about the dead gent in the cottonwood or of the manager who’s shot up; an’ how that same manager outfits me with ten sacks of mule-food an’ I goes p’intin’ out for the Southeast an’ forgets all I sees an’ never mentions it ag’in.

“Then thar’s Sim Booth of the Fryin’ Pan outfit, who’s one evenin’ camped with me at Antelope Springs; an’ who saddles up an’ ropes onto the laigs of a dead Injun where they’re stickin’ forth—­bein’ washed free by the rains—­an’ pulls an’ rolls that copper-coloured departed outen his sepulchre a lot, an’ then starts his pony off at a canter an’ sort o’ fritters the remains about the landscape.  Sim does this on the argyment that the obsequies, former, takes place too near the spring.  This yere Sim’s pony two months later steps in a dog hole when him an’ Sim’s goin’ along full swing with some cattle on a stampede, an’ the cayouse falls on Sim an’ breaks everything about him incloosive of his neck.  The other cow-punchers allers allow it’s because Sim turns out that aborigine over by Antelope Springs.  Now sech a eepisode, properly elab’rated, might feed your attention an’ hold it spellbound some.