“Shore. The hide ain’t no good at this season. And he’s shot all to bits. Do you know, Sally Jo, I got a idea this is the same ol’ mountain line what found our son? It’s like he’s the same one that eat the pore li’l’ Mexican, too, don’t you reckon? Ol’ Bowallopus?” “It wouldn’t surprise me none,” she answered, and shuddered. Her husband spurned the carcass with his boot. They got under way. High up in the sky appeared two black specks. Brother Schoonover pointed to them. “They’ll rip him to pieces in no time. But we’ll keep the claws and whiskers and the end of his tail for the baby to play with. Hey, Sally Jo?” The specks grew larger. Soon they showed as birds, hovering on effortless wings above the camping ground. Brother Schoonover whacked the mare in high glee, and they set out again on their pilgrimage. Before they had gone half a mile, the buzzards shot from the blue vault to earth. VIII THE MANKILLER All this happened in the Bad Year, which was not so many months ago. The outfit issued daily from their camps--riding bog, skinning cattle and driving in the helpless to the home pastures to be fed on oil-cake and alfalfa. The cows were walking skeletons, wild of eye, ready to wheel in impotent anger on their rescuers; or sinking weakly to the ground at the least urging, never to rise again. Every creek was dry. Springs that were held eternal became slimy mudholes and a trap. A well-grown man could easily step across the San Pedro, oozing sluggishly past mauled carcasses. Wherever one rode he found bones of hapless creatures, or starved cows stretched flat on their sides, waiting for death to end their sufferings. And the flies settled in sickening, heaving clusters. Each mire held its victim. Wobbly-legged calves wandered over the range, crying for mothers that could never come. And the sun blazed down out of a pale sky. Even the saving mesquite in the draws and on the ridges was failing as sustenance; of grass there was none. The country lay bleak and gasping from Tombstone to the border. Not even a desert cow, accustomed to slake her water hunger by chewing cactus, could have long survived such blighting months. How we prayed for rain! Manuel Salazar gave heed to the comet where he lay on his tarp, and crossed himself to avert the death-curse which was come upon the land. This weird luminary portended dire events and Manuel began, like a prudent man, to take thought of his religion. There might be nothing in religion, as Chico contended; but a man never knows, and it is the part of wisdom to be on the safe side. Then, one evening, when the mountains were taking on their blue sheen and the beauty of these vast stretches smote one with a feeling akin to pain, Archie Smith rode up to headquarters and tossed a human hand on the porch. “Found it in the far corner of the Zacaton Bottom,” he said.