“Well, he goes out and finds a prairie dog a-settin’ on his hole a-barkin’ in the sun. He pulls out his six-shooter and takes a good aim at the critter’s eye, and jist as soon as he pulls the trigger, he runs to beat hell, jist like the boss told him to. He got there in time, all right, and bent down to grab the prairie-dog; but jist as he touched it, the bullet hit him in the back jist below the left shoulder-blade. When we found him that evenin’, he was crippled so bad we had to shoot him. Too bad, too, for he had the makin’s of a first-class cowhand.” “Yeah,” said Joe, “them guys you all been tellin’ about was mighty swift, but you don’t have to go back East to find speed. Why, I’ve seen an old cowhand that growed up right here in Texas that could of beat any of them Eastern fellers. “Tell you what I saw once. One day after the spring work was over, a bunch of us decided to have a baseball game. Well, we chose up, but we liked one man havin’ enough men for two teams. “‘What we gonna do?’ says I. ‘I guess we’ll have to git along with two fielders on our side,’ “Pete Dawson spoke up and says, ‘All you men git in the field, and I’ll pitch and ketch both.’ “And damn me, if that’s not what he done. He got on the pitcher’s box, which was a prairie-dog hole, and he’d throw a ball so it whistled like a bullet; then he run in a half circle and git behind the batter and ketch it. “Not a batter ever teched the ball. It was jest three up and three down with them, and there wasn’t nothin’ for the rest of us to do. “When it was Pete’s bat, he’d jest knock a slow grounder out toward first, and he’d make a home run before the first-baseman could git a-holt of the ball. We beat ’em ninty-six to nothin’. “One time Pete was with us when we was movin’ a bunch of wild Mexico steers. One night the fool brutes stampeded. We all jumped on our hosses to try to turn ’em and git ’em to millin’. “We all had good hosses, especially Pete, who had a fine hoss he’s won lots of money with; but we couldn’t git ahead of them steers. They was jest too swift for us. “Directly Pete jumps off and takes his slicker and six-shooter with him. He circles around, and in no time, after tromping about a half a dozen jackrabbits to death, he’s in front of that herd. “We all expects to see him git kilt, but he jest trots along in front of the critters wavin’ his slicker and firin’ his six-shooter. After he’d run that way about ten miles, the herd got to millin’ and purty soon they quieted down, and we never had no more trouble with ’em. “That jest naturally took all the pertness and spirit out of them brutes. They was so ashamed of themselves that from then on out they was as gentle as a bunch of milk cows. “The only thing that hurt Pete was that when it was over, his nose was bleedin’ like six-bits.” “Got too hot, I suppose,” said Lanky.