“Jest as we gits to Lubbock, Jess notices that a tire is nearly down. He pulls up to a little garage in the edge of town and has it fixed, and then we goes on. When we gits to Plainview, we notices that the tire is nearly flat again; so he has it fixed there. Then we goes on to the rodeo, and Jess wins a hundred dollars bull-doggin’, and me seventy-five goat-ropin’, which we spends and starts home. “We gits back to Plainview and stops at the same garage where we had our tire fixed comin’ up, and we notices a new man changin’ tires. ‘Where’s the feller that was here last week?’ says Jess. ‘He was so good to us and fixed our tire so good I thought I’d bring him a little snake medicine,’ says Jess, sort of winkin’. “‘Pore feller. We buried him yesterday,’ says the man. ‘His hand all swole up and he died.’ “‘Now ain’t that too bad,’ says Jess. ‘Fine man he was. I never seen him till we stopped here last week on our way to Vega, but soon as I looked him in the eye, I says to my pal here (meanin’ me), ‘There’s a fine feller. I’m sort of funny that way,’ he says. ‘When I first see a man, I can look him in the eye and tell whether he’s any ’count or not.’ “‘Tell his family that two of his true friends lament his death,’ I says. ‘I reckon we better be gittin’ on.’ “We drives on wonderin’ if that dirty reptile did cause the pore feller’s death. ‘We’ll stop at Lubbock,’ says Jess, ‘and see if the feller there is all right.’ And so we drives up to the little garage, which is a one-man outfit, and there was a woman runnin’ it. “‘Where is the man that was here last week?’ says I. “‘Oh, my husband?’ says the woman. ‘We laid him away last Tuesday,’ tears comin’ in her eyes as she spoke. “‘I’m a pore cowpuncher,’ say I, ‘and I spent all my money at the rodeo, but I’ll write you a draft on the boss for a month’s wages, and it’ll be honored too, you needn’t be worried about that.’ “‘I’ll do the same,’ says Jess. “‘You gentlemen are very kind,’ she says, ‘but I couldn’t accept it. Besides, our home and business is paid for, and there’s the insurance money.’ “‘How did it happen?’ asks Jess. “‘I guess it was blood-pizen,’ she says. ‘His finger swelled up, and he got sicker and sicker and died. Are you all friends of his?’ “‘That we are,’ says Jess, ‘and I want to say right here that there never was a better man than--than your husband.’ “‘Naw, there wasn’t,’ says I, ‘and we wish you good luck. We’ll have to be gittin’ away.’ “We drives off overcome with sorrow on account of the death of them two men. Sometimes yet when I’m ridin’ along by myself, I think of them in their graves, and I feel that me and Jess somehow had a hand in it, and I’d jest give my hoss and saddle if it hadn’t happened. Naw, sir, Lanky. If you see one of them critters in the road, don’t run over him. You might be the innocent means of takin’ off several lives.”