“He hadn’t gone more than twenty steps, when his neck was all swole up, big as a saddle-hoss. Then he begin to rave and charge and beller so pitifully that we jest shot him to git him out of his misery. “That’s how pizenous them centipedes are. When I saw that pore brute all swole up and out of his head with torment, I knowed what a close call I’d had.” Lanky’s attention had been divided between Red and the narrator. He had glanced several times at Joe also, who was sitting complacent, but not contemptuous, listening with the respect due a good liar even though a comparatively inexperienced one. But Red, during the first part of Hank’s narrative had been in a deep study. He rolled several cigarettes, only to throw them away after taking a puff or two. He appeared to listen; yet it was obvious that the narrator did not have his full attention. Near the climax to Hank’s tale, however, his countenance brightened up, and from that time he sat quietly as one having an ace in the hole. When Hank finished, he was ready. “I didn’t have no crack shot, nor no friend of no kind to help me out once when I come near passin’ in my checks out in the Glass Mountains. “I never did know what was the matter with that fool hoss I was ridin’. He’d always been a mighty sensible animal--fine cow-pony, quarter hoss, single-footer, and the best night hoss on the outfit. I’d rode him hard that day, and I thought maybe he was tired of life and took a sudden notion to kill his self like an English feller that come to our outfit and stayed a while once. Then, again, I thought he might of went blind all at once. I never could figger it out. Anyway, he never acted like that before.” “What did he do?” asked Lanky. “What did he do? He done a plenty. Still I don’t blame him, pore brute. There must have been somethin’ the matter. “You see, I was ridin’ back to the headquarters on a dark night. I was about half asleep, for I knowed that old Frijole--that was his name--would find the way. He always could. Well, I was ridin’ along that way, when all of a sudden I finds us both fallin’ down through empty space. Seemed like we never would hit the ground, and before we got bottom, I figgered out what had happened. “Out in the edge of the Glass Mountains there was a big sink-hole right out on the mesa. It was as big across as a house, and six lariats deep right straight down--we afterwards measured it--and Frijole had loped off into that dang hole with me, and there we was makin’ for the bottom. “I thinks to myself, ‘This is where you pass in your checks, Red. Some gits it early and some gits it late, but they all gits it.’ Then we hits bottom. “I guess I was shook up purty bad, for I woke up after while, and there I was settin’ on a dead hoss. You see, Frijole had broke his neck landin’, pore feller. I always will wonder what was a eatin’ on him to make him lope off into a hole like that. Must of been somethin’.