The fire had died to a bed of coals. It was no longer possible to see the night herders, but the indistinct songs reached the camp. Lanky was seated on his bed-roll. The sitters had dwindled to four. “I didn’t know they were that bad,” observed Lanky. “That bad!” said Joe Martin. Joe was a veteran of the open range and of the overland trail. Far and near he was known by the name of “Windy Joe,” but Lanky had not learned of this last fact. “That bad!” said Joe again. “Them snakes that Red and Hank told you about must of been baby snakes. They couldn’t of been real, he-men, venomous reptiles like the one that killed Ike Morgan. Ike was one of the best friends I ever had in this world. He worked on the Yellow House when Red and Hank here was wearin’ foldin’ britches. “Ike was some cowhand, even if he did have a wooden leg. I reckon I might as well tell you how he got his wooden leg, while I’m about it. You see it was like this. Ike was ridin’ the range one winter day, and as he started up a little canyon, his hoss fell and caught Ike’s leg. The critter broke two of his own legs in the fall, and there he was on Ike’s leg and couldn’t git up. And there was pore Ike wonderin’ if he’d starve before anybody found him. “Purty soon Ike smelled a norther, and the next thing he knowed, the norther was there, and the next thing he knowed after that, he had icicles on his nose. Ike knowed he’d freeze to death, and that _muy pronto_ if he didn’t find some way to git loose. He figgered and figgered. That was one thing about Ike, he always used his head. Well, he figgered and figgered, and purty soon he looked around, and he seen an axe about a hundred yards off. He ’lowed some nester had been haulin’ wood out of the canyon and had lost his axe. And mighty glad Ike was of the nester’s hard luck, too. And jest to show you the nerve of the man, he goes over and gits the axe and chops off his own leg, and he didn’t have any chloroform, either, it not bein’ wormy season, and gits his self loose and walks ten miles into headquarters. That’s what I call nerve. “But what I started out to tell you was how Ike met his death. The boss sent Ike to town and had the blacksmith make him a peg-leg. A fine limb it was, too. Ike had him a stirrup made to fit it, and he could ride as good as ever. Many a bronc he peeled after that. He could dance like a fool, and hold his own in any shootin’ match that any tough _hombre_ ever started. Shame it was that he had to be kilt by a dirty reptile.