“Before I come here to work, I was riding for the Circle C. One day I was riding away down in the Bad-lands alone and my horse slipped in some shale rock and went lame; strained his shoulder so I couldn’t ride him.  That put me afoot, and climbing up and down them hills I lost my bearings and didn’t know where I was at for a day or two.  I wandered around aimless, and got into a strip uh country that was new to me and plumb lonesome and wild.

“That second day is when I happened across this ruin.  I was looking down into a deep, shut-in coulee, hunting water, when the sun come out and shone straight on to this place.  It was right down under me; a stone ruin, with a tower on one end and kinda tumbled down so it wasn’t so awful high—­the tower wasn’t.  There was a—­a—­”

“Moat,” Branciforte suggested.

“That’s the word—­a moat around it, and a bridge that was just about gone to pieces.  It had loopholes, like the pictures of castles, and a—­”

“Battlement?” ventured one of the musical-comedy cowgirls.

Andy had not meant to say battlement; of a truth, his conception of battlements was extremely hazy, but he caught up the word and warmed to the subject.  “Battlement? well I should guess yes!  There was about as elegant a battlement as I’d want to see anywhere.  It was sure a peach.  It was—­” he hesitated for a fraction of a second.  “It was high as the tower, and it had figures carved all over it; them kind that looks like kid-drawing in school, with bows and arrows stuck out in front of ’em, threatening.”

“Not the old Greek!” exclaimed one of the girls in a little, breathless voice.

“I couldn’t say as to that,” Andy made guarded reply.  “I never made no special study of them things.  But they was sure old.  And—­”

“About how large was the castle?” put in the man who wrote things.  “How many rooms, say?”

“I’d hate to give a guess at the size.  I didn’t step it off, and I’m a punk guesser.  The rooms I didn’t count.  I only explored around in the main hall, like, a little.  But it got dark early, down in there, and I didn’t have no matches to waste.  And next morning I started right out at sun-up to find the way home.  No, I never counted the rooms, and if I had, the chances are I’d have likely counted the same one more’n once; to count them rooms would take an expert, which I ain’t—­not at counting.  I don’t reckon, though, that there was so awful many.  Anyway, not more than fifteen or twenty.  But as I say, I couldn’t rightly make a guess, even; or I’d hate to.  Ruins don’t interest me much, though I was kinda surprised to run acrost that one, all right, and I’m willing to gamble there was warm and exciting times down there when the place was in running order.  I’d kinda like to have been down there then.  Last fall, though, there wasn’t nothing to get excited over, except getting out uh there.”

“A castle away out here!  Just think, good people, what that means!  Romance, adventure and scientific discoveries!  We must go right down there and explore the place.  Why can’t we start at once—­in the morning?  This gentleman can guide us to the place, and—­”