"No breed girls in mine! The new school-marm's more to my likin'," he boasted. "An' from the sweet looks she give me, I reckon I ain't goin' to have no trouble there!" The next instant Long Bill lay sprawling in the dust, while old Jim McCullen rained blow after blow upon him. When he finished, Long Bill remained motionless, the blood streaming from his nose and mouth. Old Jim straightened up and looked down at the fallen giant with utmost contempt, then he pulled his disarranged cartridge belt into shape and glanced at his hands. They were covered with the cowboy's blood. "Reckon I'd better wash up a bit," he remarked easily, and went into the cook-tent. The men lounged about, apparently indifferent to the scene which was being enacted. It might have been an every day occurrence, so little interest they showed, yet several stalwart fellows gave old Jim McCullen an admiring glance as he passed them. On the crest of a near divide stood a group of squaws. After a short conference they proceeded slowly, shyly toward the round-up camp. Some distance from it they grouped together again and waited while a very old woman wrapped in a dingy white blanket came boldly up to the group of men, and in a jargon of French and Indian asked for the refuse of the newly killed yearling. The foreman pointed to where it lay, and gruffly told her to go and get it, but she spied the unconscious figure of Long Bill stretched out upon the grassy flat, and with a low cry of woe flung herself down beside him. "Who done this?" she cried in very plain English, facing the cowboys with a look of blackest anger. No answer came. "Better tell her," suggested a cow-puncher who was unrolling his bed. "She's a witch, you know." "If she's a witch she don't need no telling," replied another, at which they all laughed. "A witch?" said one. "I sure thought witches were all burned up!" The old squaw was examining the fallen man, who began to show signs of consciousness. She bristled like a dog at the cowboy's remark. "_I see beyond!_ I know the future, the past, _everything_!" she cried impressively. "I read your thoughts! Say what you like, you dogs, but not one o' you would like me to tell what I read in your lives. _I know! I know! I know everything!_" Her voice reached a high, weird cry. Her blanket had slipped down, leaving her hair in wisps about her mummified face. To all appearances she might have been a genuine witch as she groveled over Long Bill. "Ask her how she tells fortunes--cards or tea-leaves," said one. "Or by the palm of your hand or the stars above," suggested another. "Wonder where she keeps her broomstick," mused a third. Just then McCullen came out of the cook-tent and faced the spectacle. "I see he's found a nurse," he remarked, and walked over to his horse. The old woman stood and gesticulated wildly, throwing mad, incoherent words at him. Finally her jargon changed into fair English.