Jim Floyd recognized it at once by the triangular scar on the palm. The hand had been gnawed off cleanly at the wrist. Floyd wrapped the gruesome thing in a sack, wishful to give it decent interment when opportunity should offer. “It’s ol’ man Greer’s,” he said. “You remember ol’ man Greer? He used to dig postholes for the Lazy L. Where’s the rest of him, Smith?” “I aim to go and see. Ki-yotes eat him up, don’t you reckon, Jim?” “It sure looks that way. Pore ol’ Greer--he could dig postholes right quick,” the boss answered. What Archie found of the digger of postholes established nothing of the manner of death. Both arms were gone and wolves had dragged the body; hence, there was no real argument against the theory that old man Greer, who indulged a taste for _tequila_, had sustained a fall from his horse and had perished miserably within sight of the ranch. Yet Archie found this hard to believe. Wolves do not crush in the skull of a man, and it was the cowboy’s conviction that anyone could fall off Hardtimes, the digger’s mount, twice or thrice a day with no other injury than the blow to his pride. Two days later Manuel Salazar brought in Greer’s horse, shockingly gaunt and worried, and swelled as to the head. But what interested the outfit, when the saddle and bridle had been removed from Hardtimes, were long, parallel wales along neck and flank. Archie pronounced them to be the marks of a horse’s teeth. “That don’t show anything. He wandered off and got into a fight with another horse,” Floyd asserted. “Yes, sir; it’s like that he done just that.” After which he dismissed the unfortunate Greer from his mind. The outfit shook its head and expressed sorrow for the lonely digger, but opined that his fate surely went to show how injurious steady application to _tequila_ could be, more especially in cruel weather. The Mexicans, and the nesters in outlying parts, were not satisfied with the explanation put forward. They discussed the mystery during protracted pauses in work and in the dark of the night. When two men met on a trail and halted to pass the time of day, old man Greer was the subject of talk. There were rumors of a snug fortune the digger had amassed and buried--sixty-six thousand dollars in gold, it was. Joe Toole, who made a nice, comfortable living by systematic theft of calves from the cattle company, did not hesitate to hint that Greer had died a victim to its professional gun-fighter for reasons best known to the rich corporation; but, then, Joe was prejudiced. Soon the death grew to a murder, and no man not of white blood would ride the Zacaton Bottom after nightfall. Tommy Floyd talked of these and other matters to his father as the boss was feeding Apache. “Pshaw!” Floyd said contemptuously. “Don’t you put no stock in them stories, Tommy, boy. Some people in this here country can smell a skunk when they sight a dead tree.” “But what do you guess killed him, Dad?”