"Which I puts it up as how you ain't never heard about that time that
Hardenberg and Strokher--the Englisher--had a friendly go with bare
knuckles--ten rounds it was--all along o' a feemale woman?"
It is a small world and I had just found out that my friend, Bunt
McBride--horse-wrangler, miner, faro-dealer and bone-gatherer--whose
world was the plains and ranges of the Great Southwest, was known of the
Three Black Crows, Hardenberg, Strokher and Ally Bazan, and had even
foregathered with them on more than one of their ventures for Cyrus
Ryder's Exploitation Agency--ventures that had nothing of the desert in
them, but that involved the sea, and the schooner, and the taste of the
great-lunged canorous trades.
"Ye ain't never crossed the trail o' that mournful history?"