Page:Morley roberts--Painted Rock.djvu/20

 terror of a State was equal worth the blood and bones of a white man. However, that's only my sore talk, because I've grown up here, and the Panhandle of Texas isn't what it was cracked up to be. This yer Smith was a pioneer in his way, and hed a hell of a reputation for bein' sandy with the Apaches or any other breed of Indjuns, and there's men about to this day that will tell you that same and stand to it. He had a store in San Antone and one over to Dallas likewise, and was a man with the repute of havin' made money. At times the quiet of San Antone got on his nerves, although it wasn't hell-fired quiet by any means, and killin's was frequent, and he would get up and mosey off somewhere in this direction, and maybe as far as the Staked Plain, where buffalo was plenty then, as you may judge. Then he would come back and sell stuff, and, as I said, make money. But about a year before his humiliation by the said Hale, he told me that a notion was growin' in him fast to go back to the old country for a spell. For it appears that Englishmen are the same as us in that way, and they pine for