“No,” I said, “I don’t think I ever was. Were you, Toby?” It was mean of me to ask her. Toby hates to be outdone, or admit her experiences have been incomplete. I saw her agile mind revolving for some adventure in her past that she could bring up as a creditable substitute, but she had never been anywhere near to being hung, and she knew I knew it. “H’m-m,” she said noncommittally, her inflection implying tremendous reserves,--“were you?” “Onct,” replied Biron, “only onct. But if anyone ever tells you he was near hanging, and was brave under the circumstances, don’t you believe him. There I was with the rope around my neck, and I a hollerin’ and a squealin’ like a baby, and beggin’ to be let off. There aint no man livin’, I’ll say, feelin’ them pullin’ and sawin’ away on his neck that aint a goin’ to bawl and cry an’ beg f’r mercy.” “What was the--occasion--if you don’t mind our asking?” Biron shied another stone at the cactus and missed. “Well, you see,” he raced along, “another feller had stole some horses, an’ knowin’ how he come by them an’ all that, I jest sorter relieved him of them. An’ I was a ridin’ along toward Mexico when they caught up with me.” “But I thought they no longer hanged people for,--er--for----” “Horse stealin’? They don’t much, but y’see this feller had happened to kill a coupla men gettin’ away, and when they seen me with the horses he started off with they natch’ally thought I was the one done it all.” How dark and gloomy looked the encircling hills! “They got the rope on me, and my feet was off the ground, but I blubbered so hard bimeby they let me off.” He looked at Tucson with a glance that seemed to share a common experience. “I aint sayin’ I didn’t do other things they might ’a got me for----” Tucson nodded, and opened his slow mouth to speak, but the nimbler Biron cut in. “Oh, I been pretty bad some times. Any feller thirty years old or so, if he gits to thinkin’ all the fool things he’s done, he’s likely to kill himself laughin’.” Tucson nodded gravely. “I reckon----” “We uster to go down to the border, to them Mexican dances, to have fun with the Mexican girls. They have music an’ everthin’ an’ the greasers sit on one side of the hall and the girls on the other. We’d mix in and take the girls away from the men, an’ every time the big bull fiddle give a whoop, we’d take a drink of mescal. Then we’d go shoot up the town. Whenever we’d kill a Mexican, we’d put a notch on our gun, as long as the’ was room. I knowed one feller, Tom Lee by name, knowed him well, they say accounted for five hundred, all in all.” “And didn’t you get into trouble with the law?” “_Law?_” Biron snorted. “Law? They aint no law against shootin’ _dawgs_, is they?”