“Well, when I begins to look around for somethin’ to cook it with, not a thing can I find. There ain’t a stick of timber, not a twig, nor a dry buffalo chip nowhere around there. I was hungry enough to have et that meat raw and bloody, and I needed it too, for I was so hungry that I was weak in the knees. But somehow I never was much of a raw meat eater. It ain’t civilized. “Well, as I was sayin’, I couldn’t find no regular fuel; so I calkilated I’d try the prairie grass, which was long and curly and dry. I gathers up a big pile, puts the hunk of meat on my ramrod and holds it over the grass and lights a match. Jest one flash and the fire’s all gone, except the wind comes up all at once and sets the dang prairie on fire. “Well, sir, I takes out after that prairie-fire, holdin’ my meat over the blaze. It would burn along purty regular for a while; then all of a sudden it would give a big jump and tear out across the plains like hell after a wild woman, and I’d have to do my dangest to keep up with it. Well, I chased that prairie-fire about three hours, I recken, but I finally got my meat cooked. I et it--and it shore did taste good, too--and started back across the burnt country to where I had shot the buffalo. Damn me, if I hadn’t run so far in three hours that it took me two days to git back. There my hoss was waitin’ fer me, and I found the outfit the next day.” “Yeah, that was purty good runnin’,” said Red. “But you nor the feller Hank was a-tellin’ about either wasn’t as swift as one of them college chaps we had on an outfit where I worked once. Not near so swift. Been a good thing for him if he hadn’t been so fast. Too swift for his own good.” “How was that?” asked Lanky. “Here’s the way it was,” said Red. “He was a greenhorn, but he was a-learnin’ fast. Would of made a good cowhand, pore feller. He got to be a purty good shot with a Winchester and six-shooter both, and he was always practicin’ on rabbits and coyotes and prairie-dogs, and things. Then he decided he’d have a lot of critters mounted and send ’em back to his folks. “Well, he gits everything he wants but a prairie-dog, but he jist can’t git a-holt of one of them critters.” “Are they hard to hit?” asked Lanky. “Oh, he could hit ’em all right. He got so he could plug ’em right in the eye, but they always jumped in their holes and got away. They’ll do it every time, Lanky; they’ll do it every time. Why, one day he took his forty-five Winchester and shot one of the critters clean in two, but the front-end grabbed the hind-end and run down the hole with it before he could git there. [Illustration: “_Jist as he pulls the trigger, he runs to beat hell._”] “Well, he asked the boss if there was any way he could git one, and the boss told him to take good aim, and jist as soon as he pulled the trigger to run jist as fast as he could and maybe he’d git there in time to grab the critter before he got away.