"Yes," he said, "its shoulder is smashed, I can hear the bones grate. Hand me that hatchet, Jim." The hatchet was passed to him, and he struck the little colt twice with it in the head, and two of the men carried the carcass to the fence and passed it through. Jack did not understand this, which had happened so quickly, and asked Hugh, who happened to be standing near him, why they killed the colt. "Why," said Hugh, "when the mare fell on it she broke its shoulder, and it couldn't never have got well, in fact, it couldn't even have followed its mother around, it would just have had to suffer for a few days and then die; so of course it was better to kill it now." "What a pity!" said Jack, as he looked at the pretty little animal lying at his feet, whose eyes were already glazing. "Wasn't there any way to have cured it?" "No," said Hugh, "I expect not, and it would have cost more to try to cure it than it could ever have been worth; I expect it was better to kill it off right now." When supper time had come that night, all the colts had been branded, and orders were given that after Mr. Sturgis's horses had been cut out of the bunch, next morning, the roundup should move on. After supper that night, Jack sat down near three or four of the cowboys who were smoking their pipes and cigarettes by the corner of the house, and listened to their talk. One of them seemed to be telling a story. "I tell you," he said, "it was about the funniest thing I ever saw. You see, we'd run the bear may be a mile and a half, and two or three of us had put our ropes on him, but he always managed to slip out. It was a pretty hot day, and his tongue was hangin' out about a yard, and toward the end he was pretty mad, and when we got close, he'd turn round and charge back on us. One time when he did this he passed pretty close to Mat, who was on a slow horse, and Mat managed to catch him by the hind leg, and the rope stayed; but when Mat tried to hold him, the bear turned round and charged, and Mat got kind o' scared, and just turned the rope loose from his saddle and ran, and the bear went on. Well, pretty quick, we came to a little pile of rocks, with three or four cedars growing around them, and the bear stopped at these rocks and wouldn't run no further. We run up pretty close to him and tried to rope him, but he was sort o' half under the rocks and we couldn't catch him. He had Mat's rope on his hind leg yet, and it was lying out on the prairie, and we commenced to make fun of Mat, and to tell him to ride in there and pick up his rope and drag the bear out, but of course we didn't expect he'd try to do no such fool thing as that, but we kept on making fun of him, and the first thing we knew he started to ride by the bear and pick up his rope. When he got right close, just as he was goin' to stoop for the rope, there comes the bear sailing out after him, and lookin' mighty savage, I tell ye. He turned his old horse and run, and the bear run,