But wust wer this, he stole the mule, An' I were bilked complete; Such thieves, we hossmen makes a rule To lift 'em from their feet. We started arter that 'ere pup, An' took the judge along, For fear, with all our dander up, We might do somethin' wrong. We caught him under twenty miles, An tried him under trees; The judge he passed around the "smiles," As sort o' jury fees. "Pris'ner," says judge, "now say your say, An' make it short an' sweet, An', while yer at it, kneel and pray, For Death yer can not cheat. No man shall hang, by this 'ere court, Exceptin' on the square; There's time fur speech, if so it's short, But none to chew or swear." [Illustration: _BUREAU OF ILLUSTRATION. BUFFALO_ JUDGE LYNCH--HIS COURT. JUDGE AND JURY. SHERIFF. ATTORNEY. LOAFER. CLERK. DEPUTY SHERIFF.] An' then the thievin' rascal cursed, An' threw his life away, He said, "Just pony out your worst, Your best would be foul play." Then judge he frowned an awful frown, An' snapped this sentence short, "Jones, twitch the rope, an' write this down, Hung for contempt of court!" Sharp 8 next morning saw us on the road leading east of town, the two dogs with us, and a young one additional, the property of a resident sportsman. Our last acquisition joined us on the run, and kept on it all day, going over the ground with the speed of a greyhound, his fine nose, however, giving him better success than his reckless pace would have indicated. Three miles from town, or half way between it and Tecumseh, our party left the wagon, with direction for it to follow the road, while we scouted along on a parallel, following the river bank. The Kaw stretched eastward, broad and shallow, with numerous sand bars, and along its edges grew the scarlet sumach and some stunted bushes, and between these and the corn a high, coarse bottom grass, with intervals at every hundred yards or so apart of a shorter variety, like that on a poor prairie. Among the bushes, there was no grass whatever, and yet the birds seemed indifferently to frequent one spot equally with another. In less than ten minutes after leaving the wagon, all the dogs were pointing on a barren looking spot, thinly sprinkled with scrubby bushes not larger than jimson-weeds. They were several yards apart, so that each animal was clearly acting on his own responsibility.