Then that bulldog ran and ran until he couldn’t run any more.  Then he walked till he couldn’t walk any farther.  Then he slept all night, while other coyotes howled dismally near by.  And in the morning he started off again, thinking he was going toward the train and his sorrowful master, really going in the opposite direction.  But there was one thing that man hadn’t taught him to do in all the years, and that was to quit, so he kept on.  And at last, as any one will who keeps going long enough, he had to arrive somewhere and he reached the Bar O Ranch.

So you and I and the dog know how he got there, but Bill Jordan, the punchers, and the boys didn’t, and presently they gave up trying to figure it out.

“’Tain’t likely his owner’ll show up, so he’s ours,” said Bill Jordan.

“He’s Whitey’s,” Buck Higgins maintained.  “He saw him first.”

This law was older than any ranch house, or any cowpuncher, so it held good, and Whitey became the proud owner of the dog.  The matter of his name came next in importance.  Of course he had one, and he was awakened, and asked to respond to as many dog names as the party could think of.  These were many, running from Towser to Nero, but they brought no response from the sleepy animal.

“Must be somep’n unusual,” Buck Higgins decided, and he ventured on “Alphonse” and “Julius Caesar,” but they didn’t fit.

“Well, we jest nachally got t’ give him a name,” said Shorty Palmer.

Again the list was gone over, but nothing seemed quite right.  “Oughta be somep’n’ ’propriate,” said Bill Jordan.  “How ’bout Moses?  He was lost in th’ wilderness.”

“Wilderness nothin’!” objected Buck.  “In the bullrushes.  Them ain’t prairie grass.”

“Besides,” said Whitey, “he ought to have a fighting name.  Napoleon!”

“’Tain’t English.”

“Wellington.”

“Too long.”

As he seemed to have no choice in naming his own dog, Whitey turned in despair to Injun, who had stood solemnly by.  “How about you?” Whitey asked.  “Haven’t you a name to suggest?”

The dog knew that he was the subject of the talk, and possibly felt that he ought to keep awake, for he sat on the veranda and blinked at the humans.  Injun gazed at him stolidly.

“Huh!” he grunted.  “Sittin’ Bull.”

“Great!” cried all the others.

This matter settled, the men went away.  Sitting Bull stretched himself out on the veranda and again fell asleep, and Whitey told Injun that the dog’s coming probably was a good omen.  That there ought to be something doing on the ranch now.

CHAPTER II

A SURPRISE

It was early morning, and the Bar O Ranch slept, heedless of the keen late-autumn air that had in it just a faint, brisk hint of the fall frosts to come.  Whitey came out of the ranch house and moved toward the stable.  Sitting Bull trudged after him.