"Right here, fellers, she showed she was fit to be the wife of a man livin' in such a country. She knowed mighty well that she'd be follered, an' that her trail would be hard to find, so what does she do but tear pieces out of the gingham skirt she had on, an' hang 'em along on a sage brush here, an' a Spanish bayonet there, so's we could foller faster. When we struck this sign an' seed what sh'd done, one of the boys says, says he, 'Fellers, ain't she a trump, an' no mistake?' An' so she shore was. "We jist turned our hosses loose along here, an' one of us would lope ahead an' cut for sign, an' as soon as he found it, another would cut in ahead of him, an' in that way we trailed her up, right peart. We soon ran the trail down to the edge of the big mesa back of the Carrizo station. "If you remember, it's quite a cliff there, mebbeso two hundred feet down; sort of in steps, from two to six feet high. We seen where she jumped over the fust ledge an' helped the young ones down. She worked her way down the rocky cliff that way, step by step, an' it must 'a' been a job, too, in the dark, an' as cold as she was. Two of us went on down the cliff, an' I sent the other boys around with the hosses, to a break, where there was a good trail. "Right here I began to think that p'raps she's been saved, after all. 'Twas only a mile from the foot of the mesa to the station at Carrizo, an' in plain sight from where we were. "Me an' Little Bob, who was with me, was so sure that she was all right that we quit follerin' the trail an' jist got down the cliff anywhere we could. When we got to the bottom an' clear of the rocks, we set out to cut for her trail ag'in, when Little Bob says, says he, 'There she is, Jack.' "Lord, how my heart jumped into my mouth. Seemed as if I could most taste it. I looks where Bob was a-p'intin', and shore enough, there she were a-sittin' on a rock with the little boy in her lap, an' the little girl a-leanin' up ag'in her an' a-lookin' into her face. "We both gave a yell an' started to'ds her, but she never paid no 'tention to us, which seemed to me mighty queer like. But we were a little to one side of her, an' I thought mebbe she were so tired she didn't notice us. Bob he got up to her fust, an' walked up an' put his hand on her shoulder to shake her, but, fellers, you all know how 'twas, the pore little woman an' the two young ones were dead. "Little Bob was so skeert that he couldn't do nothin', but I fired all the shots in my six-shooter, an' the balance of the outfit soon came up to us. "Wilson he had a little more savvy than the rest of us, an' rode back an' met pore Hart, who had got off to one side, an' tells him sort o' kindly like, what we'd found; an' I reckon that Jim never had no harder job in all his life. "Hart says, says he, 'Jim, old man, you take 'em inter town as tenderly as you kin, an' make all the arrangements for the funeral, an' I'll follow you in tonight.'