“Then thar’s a mornin’ when I finds myse’f not five miles down the wind from a prairie fire; an’ it crackin’ an’ roarin’ in flame-sheets twenty foot high an’ makin’ for’ard jumps of fifty foot.  What do I do?  Go for’ard down the wind, set fire to the grass myse’f, an’ let her burn ahead of me.  In two minutes I’m over on a burned deestrict of my own, an’ by the time the orig’nal flames works down to my fire line, my own speshul fire is three miles ahead an I myse’f am ramblin’ along cool an’ saloobrious with a safe, shore area of burnt prairie to my r’ar.

“An’ thar’s a night on the Serrita la Cruz doorin’ a storm, when the lightnin’ melts the tire on the wheel of my trail-waggon, an’ me layin’ onder it at the time.  An’ it don’t even wake me up.  Thar’s the time, too, when I crosses up at Chico Springs with eighty Injuns who’s been buffalo huntin’ over to the South Paloduro, an’ has with ’em four hundred odd ponies loaded with hides an’ buffalo beef an’ all headed for their home-camps over back of Taos.  The bucks is restin’ up a day or two when I rides in; later me an’ a half dozen jumps a band of antelopes jest ’round a p’int of rocks.  Son, you-all would have admired to see them savages shoot their arrows.  I observes one young buck a heap clost.  He holds the bow flat down with his left hand while his arrows in their cow-skin quiver sticks over his right shoulder.  The way he would flash his right hand back, yank forth a arrow, slam it on his bow, pull it to the head an’ cut it loose, is shore a heap earnest.  Them missiles would go sailin’ off for over three hundred yards, an’ I sees him get seven started before ever the first one strikes the ground.  The Injuns acquires four antelope by this archery an’ shoots mebby some forty arrows; all of which they carefully reclaims when the excitement subsides.  She’s trooly a sperited exhibition an’ I finds it mighty entertainin’.

“I throws these hints loose to show what might be allooded to by way of stories, grave and gay, of sights pecooliar to the trail if only some gent of experience ups an’ devotes himse’f to the relations.  As it is, however, an’ recurrin’ to Tom an’ Jerry—­the same bein’ as I informs you, my two wheel mules—­I reckons now I might better set forth as to how they comes to die that time.  It’s his obstinacy that downs Jerry; while pore, tender Tom perishes the victim—­volunteer at that—­of the love he b’ars his contrary mate.

“Them mules, Tom an’ Jerry, is obtained by me, orig’nal in Vegas.  They’re the wheelers of a eight-mule team; an’ I gives Frosty—­who’s a gambler an’ wins ’em at monte of some locoed sport from Chaparita—­twelve hundred dollars for the outfit.  Which the same is cheap an’ easy at double the dinero.