Dan's Private Mark

"Them was pretty good shots," said the old sheep raiser when the boys had finished telling about some glass ball shooting they had done at the gun club tournament, "butfolks nowadays don't do no shootin like they did a few years ago. There was Dau Hardin now, who run a sheep rauch in west Texas in 1881; he could shoot. " "Pretty good shot, was he?" asked the boys, to draw the old rnan out. "Well, he was a good, fair shot for them times and locality. A Colt's 45 was Dau's favorite. He run about 6,000 sheep and a good rnany cattle and horses. The ranchers all marked the ears of their stook, eaoh man in a different way, to distinguish their property. Dan's rnark was a hole in the left ear and an underbit in the right, and he never allowed a knife to be used on bis ranch. He marked every animal himself with bis six shooter, and he never made a mistake. It was a sight to see liim giillopiu across the prairie on his mustang after a bunch of lambs or a round up of spring calves, a-placin his marks with liis 45 and never varyiu a sixteeuth of au inch from where they belonged. Dun marked more raavericks than auybody eise in the country put together. "From practiein so ranch Dan got to be a first rate shot. He used to ride aloug in his pasture and put his mark on the coyotes and jack rabbits jnst to keep his hand in. It got so that nine times out of ten wben a man killed a deer with bis winchester he would find a hole in its left and an underbit iu its right ear, and he'd ahvays send Dan over a quarter of venisou when he got it home. I seeu Dau win a bet of $50 one day from a tenderfoot. We was ridin along the road and ■weseentlie gíouñd a-nilnipin up where a mole was shovin along out of sight nnder the earth. Dan made his proposition, the tenderfoot took him up, and Dan's old 45 went off a conple of times. We dng the mole up, and there was the marks in his ears right where they belonged. After awhile I don't think there was a living thing on Dan's ranch except his wife's that didn't have his mark in its ears. "This babit of Dan 's got him out of a pretty bad sorape one time. A long about 1882, when free range cominenced gettin scarce, the fence cutters got to cuttin the wire fences aronnd the pastures aud give the sheep men lots of trouble. Daii's had been cut half a dozen times, and he was mad. One day he rode out without his guu and saw a low down rustier named Tompkins slicin his wires like fiddlestriugs with a pair of nippers. Tompkins got on his norse and let out, and Dan rode back to his ranch and got his gun. He struck out on Tompkins' trail and overhauled him about sundown in the little towu that was the countyseat. Dan shot him quietly and was about to get a cup of coffee and start back home when he ■was surprised by the sheriff's arrestin iim. You see, that was about the time ;he law and order gang got to raisin Cain in the west and tryin to set down on promiscuous shootin and personal liberty. They scared up a judge and a jury somewere and held a kind of court right away to try Dan. Tompkina had a lot of friends in town, among the hoss thieves and free grassers, and they come in by the dozen and swore that Tompkins hadn't been out of town for a week, and that Dan 's story about his cuttin the feuce didn't go. Dan had no witnesses, aud it began to look kind of funny for him. They had Torapkins laid out on a table in the conrtroom. "Directly Dan went over and looked pretty sharp at Tompkins, and then he asked one of the deputies to go out to a Httle jewelry store across the street and bring a magnifying glass. The deputy went and got it, and Dan handed it to the judge and asked him to step down and look at something a minute. There was a mosquito with his bill fast in Tompkins' ear, and Dan asked the judge to take a good look at it with the glass. The judge did ho, and biest if that mosquito didn't have a hole in its left and an underbit in its right ear, as shore as I'm sitting here. Everybody knew Dan 's mark, and the court was convinced that Tompkins must have been prowlin ronud his ranch. It was what you would cali good circumstantial evience, and ten minutes afterward Dan vas on his way home." There was a little silence among the boys, and then the one who had broken 45 glass balls out of a possible 50 suggested that some lemonade be handed