“The boss was terribly worried because he didn’t like the idea of trainin’ on foot, and besides he didn’t know whether his hands would stay with him or not if he didn’t have nothin’ for ’em to ride. Well, I figured there must be a cause of hoss sickness jest as there is for everything else. So I begins to take note. I notices that all the sick hosses has mud-balls on their tails. Then I guesses what must be the matter. The weight of the mud on the critters’ tails was makin’ sech a pull on the brutes’ hides that they jest couldn’t shet their eyes. And I figured that bein’ unable to shet their eyes, they was jest naturally dyin’ for sleep. I tells the boss, and we cuts off the balls of mud. As soon as we would cut one off, the critter would fall into a deep sleep, jest like Adam in the Bible. Some of the worst ones slept steady for four days and nights, and then woke up fresh and pert as ever.” “Still,” said Red, “it ain’t the mud and it ain’t the wind that makes Texas weather bad; it’s the sudden and quick changes.” “That’s right,” said Hank; “that’s right, as our new boss found out once. He ’lowed he was goin’ to keep a record of the weather. So he comes home with a brand-new thermometer and hangs it up on the front porch, and calls us boys to look at it. Well, sir, while we was standin’ there the mercury runs up to about ninety or a hundred to git a good start. Then all of a sudden, down she goes with sech a jar that she jest naturally knocks the bottom right out of the tube and ruins the boss’s new thingamabob. Good instrument it was too; not jest a mercantile advertisement, but a good one that he had bought and paid money for. “But that didn’t faze that man none. He sent off back East somewheres and had one made to order with a rubber cushion in the bottom of the tube to take up the jar when the mercury fell. He got a patent on the idear and got rich. His thermometers are in use all over the Southwest. They’re the only kind that’ll stand the climate. “This feller was jest crazy about his new thermometer. He was always lookin’ to see how cold it was or how hot it was. Once a norther come up in the night, and he jest had to git up and go look at his instrument. He struck a match so he could see, and the match jest froze, and he had to build a fire and warm it up before he could blow it out.” “That might sound a bit windy to a feller that didn’t know the country,” said Joe, “but it’s probably so. I seen sunshine freeze right on the streets of Amarillo one time. Durin’ one of the long cold spells they had up there, all the chickens died for want of sleep. You see, they couldn’t tell when it was night, and the sunshine stayed froze so long they jest naturally died.”