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Miss Tonia wears the hat I take her to Cactus tomorrow.”

“I’ll take you up,” shouted Pearson. “But, oh, it’s just like horse-stealing for me! I can use that sorrel for a lady’s animal when—when somebody comes over to Mucho Calor, and———”

Burrows’s dark face glowered so suddenly that the cowman broke off his sentence. But Pearson could never feel any pressure for long.

“What’s all this Easter business about, Burr?” he asked cheerfully. “Why do the women folks have to have new hats by the almanac or bust all cinches trying to get ’em?”

“It’s a seasonable statute out of the testaments,” explained Burrows. “It’s ordered by the Pope or somebody. And it has something to do with the Zodiac. I don’t know exactly, but I think it was invented by the Egyptians.”

“It’s an all-right jubilee if the heathens did put their brand on it,” said Pearson; “or else Tonia wouldn’t have anything to do with it. And they pull it off at church, too. Suppose there ain’t but one hat in the Lone Elm store, Burr!”

“Then,” said Burrows, darkly, “the best man of us’ll take it back to the Espinosa.”

“Oh, man!” cried Pearson, throwing his hat high and catching it again, “there’s nothing like you come off the sheep ranges before. You talk good and collateral to the occasion. And if there’s more than one?”