The sportsman's instinct was strong in Brevoort, so he and Douglass went out with their rifles, returning in less than an hour with a splendid buck deer and a dozen grouse. The little stream had also yielded up to Carter, who was an expert fly-fisherman, some two-score delicious trout, and the resulting meal was one fit for the gods. All cowboys are from necessity good cooks, and the fluffy, golden brown biscuits and fragrant coffee of Red's making were unexceptionable. Despite the chill of the evening they sat around a roaring camp-fire until long after the moon rose, regaled by the quaint narratives of McVey, who was a born raconteur. What added to their subtle humor immensely was the fact that the embodied jokes were almost always turned at his own expense. But the last of his relations brought tears into the eyes of one woman at least, and made Douglass kick embarrassedly at the glowing log heap until the sparks arose in an inverted cascade of fire. "Theah is some people in thu wohld that seem just bawn foh trubble! They are built a-puppos, like a woodpecker, an' mizzery nacherally poahs upon 'em when everybody else is so allfired happy that it hurts. "I mind a fambly o' that kind which come oveh yeah from thu Picketwire (Purgatoire River) three yeah ago. They was foah on 'em, two ole ones an' a couple o' kids, boy 'n gyurl, 'bout sixteen yeahs ole, each." "How old, each?" asked Douglass, artlessly. "'Bout sixteen yeah ole, each, I said, an' I didn't stuttah, neither! They was twinneds. Thu boy was tow-haided an' ornary; thu gyurl were a roan, even redder'n me! I think she were thu freckledst critter I eveh see, an' ugly! Say, honest, she was afeared to look inter a lookin' glass an' every time she see her face axcidental she hollered! "Thet outfit were shore onlucky! Fust theah hosses got into a loco patch, an' one dawk night walked oveh a clift thinkin' it were thu aidge o' a sun crack. Then theah cow gits lumpy jaw an' haster be shot. Thu hekid tried to hold out kyards one night when Lem Bowers was feelin' mean, an' it took thu waggin an' hawness to pay fer sawin off hes laig. An' when he got so's he could mosey about agin, hes krutch got stuck in thu frawg o' the railroad crossin' in Gunnison an' a freight train mussed him up redic'lous! "Naow yuh'd think thet thu two thousand plunks thu Company paid hes paw fer dammitches was a purty faih standoff fer past hawdships, but thet fambly's luck was suthin' scandalous! It were all in hunner dollah bills, an' thu ole woman cached 'em in thu mattrass of her baid. Thu mattrass were stuffed with wild hay, an' one day when thu ole woman were out pickin' Oregan grape an' osho-root fer thu ole man's rheumatiz, a burro loafered into camp an' et up thu hull shootin' match!