"Had a puncher who worked for me one time, Lang. Folks said he was the slickest horse and cow thief around, and he'd robbed banks, too. Some eastern feller came out here and wrong a song about him. You know, Lang, that man worked for me because he was hungry and needed a place to eat and sleep. And he worked hard, too. He was right proud of that song, and of all the talk about him. But one time we got to talking and from one thing and another it deeloped that here he was closing in on sixty years old, and he'd no place to go and nobody much who wanted him."
"Could happen, I suppose."
"It did happen. But that wasn't the worst of it, Lang. This slick crook they were singing that ballad about, he was sixty years old and he'd spent forty years of that time in prison."
(from Borden Chantry, by Louis L'Amour)
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