I think the mattress was stuffed with potatoes; it felt that way.
Next morning we were off again, over the same bare, brown, unpeopled wilderness.

Once we saw a badger zigzagging along a side-hill, and Frosty whipped out a big revolver--one of those "Colt 45's," I suppose--and shot it; he said in extenuation that they play the very devil with the range, digging holes for cow-punchers to break their necks over.
I was surprised at Frosty; there he had been armed, all the time, and I never guessed it.

Even when we went to bed the night before, I had not glimpsed a weapon.

Clearly, he could not be a cowboy, I reflected, else he would have worn a cartridge-belt sagging picturesquely down over one hip, and his gun dangling from it.

He put the gun away, and I don't know where; somewhere out of sight it went, and Frosty turned off the trail and went driving wild across the prairie.