"That finished, he planed a pine board, which he nailed to a stake at the head of the grave."
forked in bluejoint hay, filled the water trough, and turned in for twelve hours sleep.
He didn't get it. Three hours after sundown there came squealing and snorting from the corral. Joe came running out in the moonlight with his rifle. He saw dark figures—Indians. He let go with a shot, ran to the corral, fired again, and again—and the marauders evidently thought they had the whole ranch after them. They dashed for their horses and escaped. Joe was left with one dark huddle on the ground, a Crow Indian buck who now had a black, round eye in the middle of his forehead. It was the first man of any sort Rosebud Joe had killed.
Joe dug a shallow grave. Before throwing back the dirt on top of the body, he got the ranch Bible, and gravely, with many pauses and brow wrinklings in the lantern light, he read out a chapter selected at random. It happened to concern the casting overboard of an unpopular fisherman named Jonah, and vaguely seemed appropriate to Joe.
That finished, he planed a pine board which he nailed to a stake at the head of the grave. Lettered in black was the terse legend:
Hoss thief probly crow
Next morning he found the pole corral had been opened by the marauders, and though they had not taken any horses, all the stock had wandered out. The stallions were still hoppled, so it did not take very long to recapture them. But Joe had to delay his start for the Fort another two days.
Three trips to Dickerson apparently had finished his luck. He was half way on the fourth and last trip when real
