"Tell us about it Peg Leg. You know I was over in Kansas looking after a bunch of company steers that fall and never did get the straight of it." The speaker turned from his game of solitaire toward the one-legged cow-puncher. With his knife Russel clipped the end of a leather string from the finished "Turk's head," laid the quirt on the floor and rolled it back and forth under the sole of his boot to give it the proper "set" and finish, finally hanging it on the wall. Then he filled and lighted his pipe, and after a few preliminary puffs, began his story. [Illustration: "_We was camped over in the petrified forest_"] "Well, boys, that was one of the toughest nights I've seen in Arizony. We was camped up near the 'Peterified' Forest on our way back to the headquarter ranch. We'd been down to the railroad with a bunch of steers, and expected to bust the outfit up for the winter when we got back to the ranch. It were late in November, an' you all know how everlastin' cold it gits 'long in November an' December. "Well, 'long comes one of them tearin' howlin' sandstorms 'bout two o'clock in the afternoon, and the wagon boss camped us under the lee of a hill and wouldn't go any furder. And 'twas well he did, too, fer the wind blowed a gale, snow begin to fall, and ag'in sunset it was as ornery a piece of weather as I ever seen anywheres. You all know wood's pow'ful skeerce up thar, too, and all the cook had was sage brush an' 'chips.' "We put in a mis'able night. The wind blowed every way, an' drifted sand an' snow into our beds in spite of all a feller could do. Me and Sandy, the horse-wrangler, slep' together, an' Sandy he lowed, he did, that the Lord mus' have it in fer us pore ignorant cow-punchers that night, shore. About daylight I heard a shot, then another, an' another. Everybody 'most in camp waked up, an' Wilson, the wagon boss, he takes his six-shooter an' fires a few shots to answer 'em. "We all speculated as to what it meant at such a time, an' Wilson he says he'd bet a yearlin' ag'in a sack of terbaccer that it were some derned tenderfoot bug-hunter who'd been out to the Petrified Forest an' gone an' lost hisself, an' now was a bellerin' around like a dogie calf. The cook he lowed 'twan't no bug-hunter, 'cause that was the crack of a forty-five, an' them bug-hunter fellers ginerally packed a little short twenty-two to stand off the Injuns, an' we all laughed at this, fer the night we got the steers shipped the cook went up town an' got full as a goat, an' tried to run a 'sandy' over a meek-looking tenderfoot, who wan't a harmin' nobody; but he wan't near so meek as he looked, an' fust thing the _cocinero_ knowed he war a gazin' in to one of them same little twenty-twos, an' I'm blessed if the stranger didn't take his forty-five away from him an' turned him over to the sheriff to cool off--but I guess you all know about that.