Bein’ thoughtful that a-way, an’ preyed on by a desire to back-track every fact to its fountain-head, meanwhile considerin’ how different the kyards would have fallen final if something prior had been done or left on done, has ever been my weakness. It’s allers so with me. I can recall as a child how back in Tennessee I deevotes hours when fish-in’ or otherwise uselessly engaged, to wonderin’ whoever I’d have been personal if my maw had died in her girlhood an’ pap had wedded someone else. It’s plumb too many for me; an’ now an’ then when in a sperit of onusual cog’tation, I ups an’ wonders where I’d be if both my maw an’ pap had cashed in as colts, I’d jest simply set down he’pless, on-qualified to think at all. It’s plain that in sech on-toward events as my two parents dyin’, say, at the age of three, I sort o’ wouldn’t have happened none. This yere solemn view never fails to give me the horrors. I fixes the time of this story easy as bein’ that eepock when Jim East an’ Bob Pierce is sheriffs of the Panhandle, with headquarters in Tascosa, an’ Bob Roberson is chief of the LIT ranch. These yere evidences of merit on the parts of them three gents has not, however, anything to do with how Cold-sober Simms gets rich at farobank; how two hold-ups plots to rob him; how he’s saved by the inadvertent capture of a bob-cat who’s strange to him entire; an’ how the two hold-ups in their chagrin over Cold-sober’s escape an’ the mootual doubts it engenders, pulls on each other an’ relieves the Stranglers from the labor of stringin’ ’em to a cottonwood. These doin’s whereof I gives you a rapid rehearsal, has their start when Old Scotty an’ Locoed Charlie gets drunk in Tascosa prior to startin’ west on their buckboard with the mailbags of the Lee-Scott ranch. Locoed Charlie an’ Old Scotty is drunk when they pulls out; Cold-sober Simms is with ’em as a passenger. At their night camp half way to the Lee-Scott, Locoed Charlie, whose head can’t stand the strain of Jenkins’ nose-paint, makes war-medicine an’ lays for Old Scotty all spraddled out. As the upcome of these yere hostilities, Old Scotty confers a most elab’rate beatin’ on Locoed Charlie; after which they-all cooks their grub, feeds, an’ goes to sleep. But Locoed Charlie don’t go to sleep; he lays thar drunk an’ disgruntled an’ hungerin’ to play even. As a good revengeful scheme, Locoed Charlie allows he’ll get up an’ secrete the mailbag, thinkin’ tharby to worry Old Scotty till he sweats blood. Locoed Charlie packs the mailbag over among some rocks which is thick grown with cedar bresh. When it comes sun-up an’ Locoed Charlie is sober an’ repents, an’ tells Old Scotty of his little game, neither he nor Scotty can find that mailbag nohow. Locoed Charlie shore hides her good.