“That’s all, and that won’t take me long.  I’m used to finding horses that the varmints are fools ’nough to say are thars.  One day last spring, I war over near the staked plain all alone, when I got cotched in one of them awful nor’easters, and I never came so near freezin’ to death in all my life.  Them sort of winds go right to the marrer of yer bones, and it takes yer a week to thaw out.  Wall, sir, while I war tryin’ to start a fire, a couple of Comanches managed to slip up and steal my mustang.  I didn’t find it out till three or four hours arter, and then I war mad.  I couldn’t stand no such loss, so I took the trail, and started off on a deer-trot arter ’em.  Wall, sir, I chased them infernal varmints close on to twenty miles afore I run ’em to earth.  Then I found ’em down into a deep holler, where I come nigh tumblin’ heels over head right in atween ’em afore I knowed who they war.  Yer see it war a piece of the meanest kind of business on thar part, ’cause they each had a mustang, and I hadn’t any, and they war leadin’ mine.

“I laid low for them varmints till night, when I mounted my critter, and struck off over the country leadin’ thar two beasts with me.  I expected they’d foller, of course, for the two animals that I captured were such beauties as you don’t meet every day, so I kept ’em on the go purty steady for two days and nights, when I struck into the chapparal, tethered all three horses, tumbled over onto the ground, and put in four hours of straight solid sleep, such as makes a new man of a feller.  Wall, sir, would you believe it?  When I woke up and went to mount my hoss, he wasn’t thar.  Them same three skunks had managed to keep so close onto the trail, that, afore I woke, they slipped up, took all three of the animals, and were miles away when I opened my eyes.

“Wall, yer may skulp me if I wasn’t mad, and I couldn’t help laughin’, too, to think how nice they had come it over me.  As the game had begun atween us, I took the trail and follered it for half a week.  Yer see, them skunks didn’t mean that I shouldn’t get the best of ’em agin.  They rode fast, and kept it up as long as thar horses could stand it, by which time they had every reason to think they war a hundred miles ahead of me, and so they went in for a good rest, intending when they had got that to keep up thar flight till they reached thar village up near the headwaters of the Canadian.  Of course thar wouldn’t have been any show for me if I hadn’t had a streak of luck.  I know that country like a book, and I war purty sartin of the trail them thieves meant to take, so I started to cut across and head ’em off.  I hadn’t gone far when I come upon the camp of a Comanche war-party, numberin’ a hundred.  I hadn’t any trouble in picking out an animal that suited, and then yer see I war all right, and, for fear I might get off the track, I come back and took up the trail again, and I kept it so hot that when they went into camp I warn’t more than two miles away; I didn’t want to come any closer, for if they’d found out that I war so near, they wouldn’t have give me any kind of chance at all.