“Kerry it!” said Curly contemptuously.  “How’d you s’pose I’d kerry it?  Why, in my hat, o’ course!” and he rode off without deigning further explanation.  Franklin remained curious regarding this episode until, an hour later, Curly rode up to the house again, carrying his hat by the brim, with both hands before him, and guiding his pony with his knees.  He had, indeed, a large lump of white, soft clay, which he carried by denting in the crown of his hat and crowding the clay into the hollow.  After throwing down the clay and slapping the hat a few times on his knee, he seemed to think his headgear not injured by this transaction.

“There’s yer blamed clay,” said he; “it’ll be a good while before you need it, but there she is.”

The two were joined at this juncture by Battersleigh, who had come over to pay a morning visit, and who now stood looking on with some interest at the preparations in progress.

“It’s makin’ ye a robe is it, Ned, me boy?” said he.  “I’m bound it’s a fine thing ye’ll do.  I’ll give yer four dollars if ye’ll do as much for me.  Ye wouldn’t be leavin’ old Batty to sleep cold o’ nights, now, wud ye, Ned?”

“Oh, go tan your own robes,” said Franklin cheerfully.  “I’m not in the wholesale line.”

“You might git Juan to tan you all one or two,” said Curly.  “He kin tan ez good ez ary Injun ever was.”

“But, by the way, Curly,” said Franklin, “how is Juan this morning?  We haven’t heard from him for a day or two.”

“Oh, him?” said Curly.  “Why, he’s all right.  He’s just been layin’ ’round a little, like a dog that’s been cut up some in a wolf fight, but he’s all right now.  Shoulder’s about well, an’ as fer the knife-cut, it never did amount to nothin’ much.  You can’t hurt a Greaser much, not noways such a big one as Juan.  But didn’t he git action in that little difficulty o’ his’n?  You could a-broke the whole Cheyenne tribe, if you could a-got a-bettin’ with ’em before that fight.”

“Odds was a hundred to one against us, shure,” said Battersleigh, seating himself in the doorway of the shack.  “Ye may call the big boy loco, or whativer ye like, but it’s grateful we may be to him.  An’ tell me, if ye can, why didn’t the haythins pile in an’ polish us all off, after their chief lost his number?  No, they don’t rush our works, but off they go trailin’, as if ’twas themselves had the odds against ‘em, och-honin’ fit to set ye crazy, an’ carryin’ their dead, as if the loss o’ one man ended the future o’ the tribe.  Faith, they might have—­ Ned, ye’re never stretchin’ that hide right.”

“Them Cheyennes was plenty hot at us fer comin’ in on their huntin’ grounds,” said Curly, “an’ they shore had it in fer us.  I don’t think it was what their chief said to them that kep’ them back from jumpin’ us, ater the fight was over.  It’s a blame sight more likely that they got a sort o’ notion in their heads that Juan was bad medicine.  It