The Popular Magazine/The Dude Wrangler/Part 1

CHAPTER I.

The girl from Wyoming.

Conscious that something had disturbed him, Wallie MacPherson raised himself on his elbow in bed to listen. For a full minute he heard nothing unusual: the Atlantic breaking against the sea wall at the foot of the sloping lawn of the Colonial, the clock striking the hour in the tower of the courthouse, and the ripping, tearing, slashing noises like those of a sash-and-blind factory, produced through the long, thin nose of old Mr. Penrose, multimillionaire, two doors down the hotel corridor, all were sounds to which he was too accustomed to be awakened by them.

While Wallie remained in this posture conjecturing, the door between the room next to him and that of Mr. Penrose was struck smartly, several times, and with a vigor to denote that there was temper behind the blows which fell upon it. He had not known that the room was occupied, it being considered undesirable on account of the audible slumbers of the old gentleman.

The raps finally awakened even Mr. Penrose, who demanded sharply:

“What are you doing?”

“Hammering with the heel of my slipper,” a feminine voice answered.

“What do you want?”

“A chance to sleep.”

“Who's stopping you?”

“You're snoring.” Indignation gave an edge to the accusation.

“You're impertinent!”

“You're a nuisance!”

There was a moment's silence while Mr. Penrose seemed to be thinking of a suitable answer. Then:

“Its my privilege to snore if I want to. This is my room—I pay for it!”

“Then this side of the door is mine, and I can pound on it.”

“I suppose you're some sour old maid—you sound like it,” sneered Mr. Penrose.

“And I've no doubt you 're a Methuselah with dyspepsia!”

Wallie smote the pillow gleefully—old Mr. Penrose's collection of bottles and boxes and tablets for indigestion were a byword.

“We will see about this in the morning,” said Mr. Penrose significantly. “I have been coming to this hotel for twenty-eight years, and——”

“It's nothing to boast of,” the voice interrupted. “I shouldn't, if I had so little originality.”

Mr. Penrose, seeming to realize that the woman would have the last word if the dialogue lasted until morning, ended it with a loud snort of derision.

Dropping back upon his pillow, Wallie MacPherson mildly wondered about the woman next door to him. She must have come in on the evening train while he was at the moving pictures, and retired immediately.

A second time the ripping sound of yard after yard of calico being viciously torn, broke the night's stillness and, grinning, Wallie waited to hear what the woman next door was going to do about it. But only a stranger would have hoped to do anything about it, since to prevent Mr. Penrose from snoring was a task only a little less hopeless than that of stopping the roar of the ocean. The woman next door, of course, could not know this, so no doubt she had a mistaken notion that she might either break the old gentleman of his habit or have him banished to an isolated quarter.

Wallie had not long to wait, for shortly after Mr. Penrose started again, the tattoo on the door was repeated.

In response to a snarl that might have come from a menagerie, she advised him curtly:

“You're at it again!”

Another angry colloquy followed, and once more Mr. Penrose was forced to subside for the want of an adequate answer.

All the rest of the night the battle continued at intervals, and by morning not only Wallie, but the entire corridor was interested in the occupant of the room adjoining his. Wallie was in the office when the door of the elevator opened with a clang and Mr. Penrose sprang out of it toward Mr. Cone, the proprietor, like a starved lion about to hurl himself upon a Christian martyr.

“I've been coming here for twenty-eight years, haven't I?” he demanded.

“Twenty-eight this summer,” Mr. Cone replied soothingly.

“In that time I never have put in such a night as last night!”

“Dear me!” The proprietor seemed genuinely disturbed by the information.

“I could not sleep—I have not closed my eyes—for the battering on my door of the female in the room adjoining!”

“You astonish me! Let me see——” Mr. Cone whirled the register around and looked at it. He read aloud:

“Helene Spenceley—Prouty, Wyoming.” Mr. Cone lowered his voice discreetly: “What was her explanation?”

“She accused me of snoring!” declared Mr. Penrose furiously. “I heard the clock strike every hour until morning! Not a wink have I slept—not a wink, Mr. Cone!”

“We can arrange this satisfactorily, Mr. Penrose,” Mr. Cone smiled conciliatingly. “I have no doubt that Miss—er—Spenceley will gladly change her room if I ask her. I shall place one equally good at her disposal. Ah, I presume this is she! Let me introduce you.”

Although he would not admit it, Mr. Penrose was quite as astonished as Wallie at the appearance of the person who stepped from the elevator and walked to the desk briskly. She was young and good looking and wore suitable clothes that fitted her; also, while not aggressive she had a self-reliant manner which proclaimed the fact that she was accustomed to looking after her own interests. While she was as far removed as possible from the person Mr. Penrose had expected to see, still she was the “female” who had “sassed” him as he had not been “sassed” since he could remember, and he eyed her belligerantly as he curtly acknowledged the introduction.

“Mr. Penrose, one of our oldest guests in point of residence, tells me that you have had some little—er—difference——” began Mr. Cone affably.

“I had a hellish night!” Mr. Penrose interrupted savagely. “I hope never to put in such another.”

“I join you in that,” replied Miss Spenceley calmly, “I've never heard any one snore so horribly—I'd know your snore among a thousand.”

“Never mind—we can adjust this matter amicably. I will change your room to-day, Miss Spenceley,” Mr. Cone interposed hastily. “It hasn't quite the view, but the furnishings are more luxurious.”

“But I don't want to change,” Miss Spenceley coolly replied. “It suits me perfectly.”

“I came for quiet, and I can't stand that hammering,” declared Mr. Penrose, glaring at her.

“So did I. My nerves. Your snoring bothers me. But perhaps,” with aggravating sweetness, “I can break you of the habit.”

The millionaire turned to the proprietor, “Either this person goes or I do—that's my ultimatum!”

“I will not be bullied in any such fashion, and I can't very well be put out forcibly, can I?” and Miss Spénceley smiled at both of them. Mr. Cone looked from one to the other, helplessly.

“Then,” Mr. Penrose retorted, “I shall leave immediately! Mr. Cone”—dramatically—“the room I have occupied for twenty-eight summers is at your disposal.” His voice rose in a crescendo movement so that even in the farthermost corner of the dining room they heard it: “I have a peach orchard down in Delaware, and I shall go there, where I can snore as much as I damn please!”

CHAPTER II.

“The Happy Family.”

The guests of the Colonial Hotel arose briskly each morning to nothing. After a night of refreshing and untroubled sleep, they dressed and hurried to breakfast after the manner of travelers making close connections. Then each repaired to his favorite chair, placed in the same spot on the wide veranda, to wait for luncheon. The more energetic sometimes took a wheel chair for an hour and were pushed on the Boardwalk or attended an auction sale of antiques and curios.

The greater number of the male guests of the Colonial had retired from something—banking, wholesale drugs, the manufacture of woolens. The families were all perfectly familiar with each other's financial rating and histories, and, although they came from diverse sections of the country, they were for two months or more like one large, supremely contented family. In truth, they called themselves facetiously “The Happy Family,” and in this way Mr. Cone, who took an immense pride in them and in the fact that they returned to his hospitable roof summer after summer, always referred to them.

Strictly speaking, there were two branches of the “Family;” those whose first season antedated 1900, and the “newcomers,” who had spent only eight or ten or twelve summers at the Colonial. They were all on the most friendly terms imaginable, yet each tacitly recognized the distinction. The original “Happy Family” occupied the rocking-chairs on the right-hand side of the wide veranda, while the “newcomers” took the left, where the view was not quite so good and there was a trifle less breeze than on the other.

The less said of the “transients” the better. The few who stumbled in did not stay unless by chance they were favorably known to one of the “permanents.” Of course there was no rudeness, ever—merely the polite surprise of the regular occupants when they find a stranger in the pew on Sunday morning. Sometimes the transient stayed out his or her vacation, but usually he confided to the chambermaid, and sometimes Mr. Cone, that the guests were “doddledums” and “fossils” and found another hotel where the patrons, if less solid financially, were more interesting and sociable.

Wallace MacPherson belonged in the group of older patrons, as his aunt, Miss Mary MacPherson, had been coming since 1897, and he himself from the time he wore curls and ruffled collars, or after his aunt had taken him upon the death of his parents.

“Wallie,” as he was called by everybody, was, in his way, the one eligible man under sixty, as much of an asset to the hotel as the notoriously wealthy Mr. Penrose. Of an amiable and obliging disposition, he could always be relied upon to escort married women with mutinous husbands, and ladies who had none, mutinous or otherwise. He was twenty-four, and, in appearance, a credit to any woman he was seen with, to say nothing of the two hundred thousand it was known he would inherit from aunt Mary, who now supported him.

Wallie's appearance upon the veranda was invariably in the nature of a triumphal entry. And this morning the veranda promised to bé a lively one, since, in addition to the departure of old Mr. Penrose, who had sounded as if he was wrecking the furniture while packing his boxes, the return from the war of Will Smith, the gardener's son, was anticipated, and the guests, as an act of patriotism, meant to give him a rousing welcome. There was bunting over the doorway and around the pillars, with red, white, and blue ice cream for luncheon, and flags on the menu, not to mention a purse of seventeen dollars and twenty-three cents collected among the guests that was to be presented in appreciation of the valor which, it was understood from letters to his father, Will had shown on the field of battle.

The guests were in their usual places when Wallie came from breakfast and stood for a moment in the spacious double doorway. A cheerful chorus welcomed him as soon as he was discovered, and Mrs. C. D. Budlong put out her plump hand and held his. He did not speak instantly, for his eye was roving over the veranda as if in search of somebody, and when it rested upon Miss Spenceley, sitting alone at the far end, he seemed satisfied and inquired solicitously of Mrs. Budlong: “Did you sleep well? You are looking splendid!”

There were some points of resemblance between Mrs. Budlong and the oleander in the green tub beside which she was sitting. Her round, fat face had the pink of the blossoms, and she was nearly as motionless as if she had been potted. She often sat for hours with nothing save her black, sloelike eyes that saw everything, to show that she was not in a state of suspended animation. Her husband called her “Honey-dumplin',” and they were a most affectionate and congenial couple, although she was as silent as he was voluble.

“My rest was broken,” Mrs. Budlong turned her eyes significantly toward the far end of the veranda.

“Did you hear that terrible racket?” demanded Mr. Budlong of Wallie.

“Not so loud, 'C. D.,'” admonished Mrs. Budlong. Mrs. Budlong ran the letters together so that strangers often had the impression she was calling her husband “Seedy,” though the name was as unsuitable as well could be.

“She's driven away our oldest guest.” Mr. Budlong lowered his indignant voice a little.

“He was a nuisance with his snoring,” Wallie defended.

“She could have changed her room,” said Mrs. Budlong, taking her hand away from him. “She need not have been so obstinate.”

“He was very rude to her,” Wallie maintained stoutly. “Sleeping next door, I heard it all—and this morning in the office.”

“Anyway, I think Mr. Cone made a mistake in not insisting upon her changing her room, and so I shall tell him.” Mr. Budlong—who had made “his” in white lead and paint and kept a chauffeur and a limousine—felt that his disapproval would mean something to the proprietor.

Wallie felt relieved when he saw Mrs. Henry Appel beckoning him. As he was on his way to Mrs. Appel, Miss Mattie Gaskett clutched at his arm and detained him.

“Did you see the robins this morning, Wallie?”

“Are they here?”

“Yes, a dozen of them. They do remind me so of my dear Southland.” Miss Gaskett was from Maryland.

“The summer wouldn't be the same without either of you,” he replied gallantly, as he passed on to Mrs. Appel.

The Appels were among the important families of the Colonial, being the richest next to Mr. Penrose. They were from Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania. Mr. Appel owned anthracite coal land, and street railways, so if Mr. Appel squeezed pennies and Mrs. Appel dressed in remnants from the bargain counter their economies were regarded merely as eccentricities.

Mrs. Appel held up a sweater: “Won't you tell me how to turn this shoulder? I've forgotten. Do you purl four and knit six, or purl six and knit four, Wallie?”

Wallie laughed immoderately.

“Eight, Mrs. Appel! Purl eight and knit four—I told you yesterday. That's a lovely piece of Battenburg, Mrs. Stott. When did you start it?”

“Last month, but I've been so busy with teas and parties—so many, many things going on.”

Strictly, Mrs. Stott did not belong in the group in which she was seated. She had been coming to the Colonial only eleven years, so, really, she should have been on the other side of the veranda, but Mrs. Stott had such an insidious way of getting where and what she wanted that she was “one of them” almost before they knew it. Mr. Stott was a rising young attorney of forty-eight, and it was anticipated that he would one day wear the mantle of “the leading trial lawyer in the city.”

Wallie, moving on, stopped in front of a chair where a very thin young lady was reclining languidly.

“How's the bad heart to-day, Miss Eyester?”

“About as usual, Wallie, thank you,” she replied gratefully.

“Your lips have more color.”

Miss Eyester opened a hand bag and, taking out a small, round mirror which she carried for the purpose, inspected her lips critically.

“It does seem so,” she admitted. “If I can just keep from getting excited.”

“I can't imagine a better place than the Colonial.” The reply contained a grain of irony.

“Wallie!”

It was his aunt's voice calling and he went instantly to a tall, austere lady in a linen collar who was knitting wash rags with the feverish haste of a pieceworker in a factory. He stood before her obediently.

“Don't go in to-day.”

“Why, auntie?” In his voice there was a world of disappointment.

“It's too rough—there must have been a storm at sea.”

“But, auntie,” he protested, “I missed yesterday, taking Mrs. Appel to the auction. It isn't very rough——”

“Look at the white caps,” she interrupted curtly. “I don't want you to go, Wallie.”

“Oh, very well.” He turned away abruptly, wondering if she realized how keenly he was disappointed—a disappointment that was not made less by the fact that her fears were groundless, since not only was it not “rough,” but he was an excellent swimmer.

“The girl from Wyoming,” as he called Miss Spenceley to himself, had overheard and was looking at him with an expression in her eyes which made him redden. He sauntered past her, humming, to let her know that he did not care what she thought about him. When he turned around she had vanished and a few minutes after he saw her with her suit over her arm on the way to the bathhouse on the exclusive beach in front of the Colonial.

CHAPTER III.

“Pinkey.”

The train upon which Will Smith was expected was not due until twelve-thirty, so, since he could not go swimming and still felt rebellious over being forbidden, Wallie went upstairs to put the finishing touches on a lemonade tray of japanned tin which he had painted and intended presenting to Mr. Cone.

The design was his own, and very excellent it seemed to Wallie as he stopped at intervals and held it from him, On a moss-green background of rolling clouds a most artistic cluster of old-fashioned cabbage roses was tossed carelessly, with a brown slug on a leaf, as a touch of realism.

The gods have a way of apportioning their gifts unevenly, for not only did Wallie paint but he wrote poetry—free verse mostly; free chiefly in the sense that his contributions to the smaller magazines were, perforce, gratuitous. Also he sang—if not divinely, at least so acceptably that his services were constantly asked for charity concerts.

In addition to these he had manlier accomplishments, playing good games of tennis and golf. Besides, Mr. Appel was his only dangerous opponent on the bowling alley, and he had learned to ride at the riding academy.

Now, as he worked, he speculated as to whether he had imagined it or “The girl from Wyoming” really had laughed at him. He could not dismiss her from his mind, and the incident rankled. He told himself that she had not been there long enough to appreciate him; she knew nothing of his talents or of his popularity. She would learn that to be singled out by him for special attention meant something, and he did not consider himself a conceited man, either.

Yet Wallie continued to tingle each time that he thought of the laughter in her eyes —actual derision he feared it was. Then he had an idea. By this time she would have returned from bathing and he would go down and exhibit the cabbage roses. They would be praised and she would hear it.

Bearing the lemonade tray carefully in order not to smudge it, Wallie stepped out of the elevator and stood in the wide doorway, agreeably aware that he was a pleasing figure in his artist's smock and the flowing scarf which he always put on when he painted. No one noticed him, however, for every one was discussing the return of the “Smith boy,” and the five dollars which the railway magnate had unexpectedly contributed to the purse that he was going to present to him on behalf of the guests.

Miss Spenceley was on the veranda as he had surmised she would be, and Wallie debated as to whether he should wait until discovered and urged to show his roses, or frankly offer his work for criticism.

He hesitated—the clatter of hoofs and what appeared to be a serious runaway on the side avenue brought every one up standing. The swaying vehicle was a laundry wagon, and when it turned in at the entrance to the grounds of the Colonial, the astonished guests saw that not only had the horse a driver, but a rider!

It was not a runaway. On the contrary, the person on the horse's back was using his heels and his hat at every jump to get more speed out of the amazed animal. The wagon stopped in front of the hotel with the driver grinning uncertainly, while a soldierly figure sprang over the wheel to wring the hand of Smith, the gardener. Another on the horse's back replaced his service cap at an extraordinary angle and waited nonchalantly for the greetings to be over.

Before he went to the army, Willie Smith had been a bashful boy who blushed when the guests spoke to him, but he faced them now with the assurance of a vaudeville entertainer as he introduced his “buddy:”

“'Pinkey' Fripp, of Wyoming—a hero, ladies and gentlemen! The grittiest little soldier in the A. E. F., with a medal to prove it!”

The subject of the eulogy that followed stared back unabashed at the guests, who stared at him in admiration and curiosity. Unflattered, unmoved, he sagged to one side of the bare-backed horse with the easy grace of one accustomed to the saddle.

Pinkey Fripp was about five feet four and square as a bulldog. “Hard-boiled” is a word which might have been coined specially to describe him. The cropped hair on his round head was sandy, his skin a sun-blistered red, and his lips had deep cracks in them. His nose did not add to his beauty any more than the knife scar around his neck, which looked as if some one had barely failed in an attempt to cut his head off. The feature that saved the young fellow's face from a look of unmitigated “toughness” was his pale-gray eyes, whose steady, fearless look seemed to contend with a whimsical gleam of humor.

Pinkey listened to the recital of the exploit that had won the war cross for him, with the disciplined patience of the army, but there was a peculiar glint in his light eyes. As Smith drew to a conclusion, Pinkey slowly lifted his leg, stiffened by a machine-gun bullet, over the horse's neck and sat sideways.

The applause was so vociferous, so spontaneous, and hearty, that nothing approaching it ever had been heard at the Colonial. But it stopped as suddenly, for, in the middle of it, Pinkey gathered himself and sprang through the air like a flying squirrel, to bowl the Smith boy over. “You said you wouldn't tell about that 'Craw de gare,' ner call me a hero, and you've gone and done it!” he said accusingly as he sat astride of him. “I got feelin's jest like grown-up folks, and I don't like to be laughed at. Sorry, Big Boy, but you got this comin'!” Thereupon, with a grin, Pinkey banged his host's head on the gravel.

The two were surrounded when this astonishing incident was over and it was found that not only was the Smith boy not injured, but seemed to be used to it and bore no malice. The guests shook hands with the boys, examined the war cross that Pinkey produced reluctantly from the bottom of the flour sack in which he carried his clothing, and finally Mr. Appel presented the purse in a speech to which nobody listened—and the Smith boy shocked everybody by his extravagance when he gave five of it to the driver of the laundry wagon.

“I was shore pinin' to step in the middle of a horse,” was Pinkey's explanation of their eccentric arrival. “It kinda rests me.”

While all this was happening, Wallie stood holding his lemonade tray. When he could get close, he welcomed the Smith boy and was introduced to Pinkey, and stood around long enough to learn that the latter and Helene Spenceley knew each other.

Nobody, however, was interested in seeing his roses. Even Miss Mattie Gaskett, who always clung to him like a bur to woolen clothing with the least encouragement, said carelessly when he showed her the lemonade tray:

“As good as your best, Wallie,” and edged over to hear what Pinkey was saying.

There was nothing to do but withdraw unobtrusively, though Wallie realized with chagrin that he could have gone upstairs on his hands and knees without attracting the least attention. For the first time he regretted deeply that his eyesight had kept him out of the army, for he, too, might have been winning war crosses in the trenches instead of rolling bandages and knitting socks and sweaters.

Wallie almost hated the lemonade tray as he slammed it on the table, for in his utter disgust with everything and everybody the design seemed to look more like cabbages than roses.

CHAPTER IV.

The Brand of Cain.

There never was a nose so completely out of joint as Wallie's nor an owner more thoroughly humiliated and embittered by the fickleness and ingratitude of human nature. The sacrifices he had made in escorting dull ladies to duller movies were wasted. The unfailing courtesy with which he had retrieved their yarn and handkerchiefs, the sympathy and attention with which he had listened to their symptoms, his solicitude when they were ailing—all were forgotten now that Pinkey was in the vicinity.

The ladies swarmed around that person, quoted his sayings delightedly, and declared a million times in Wallie's hearing that “He was a character!” And the worst of it was that Helene Spenceley did not seem sufficiently aware of Wallie's existence even to laugh at him.

As the displaced cynosure sat brooding in his room the third morning after Pinkey's arrival he wished that he could think of some perfectly well-bred way to attract attention!

He believed in the psychology of clothes. Perhaps if he appeared on the veranda in something to emphasize his personality, something suggesting strength and virility, like tennis flannels, he could regain his hold on his audience? With this thought in mind Wallie opened his capacious closet filled with wearing apparel, and the moment his eye fell upon his riding breeches he had his inspiration. If “the girl from Wyoming” thought her friend Pinkey was the only person who could ride a horse, he would show her!

It took Wallie only so long to order a horse as it required to get the riding academy on the telephone.

“I want a good-looking mount—something spirited,” he instructed the person who answered.

“We've just bought some new horses,” the voice replied. “I'll send you the pick of them.”

Although Wallie actually broke his record he seemed to himself an unconscionable time in dressing, but when he gave himself a final survey in the mirror, he had every reason to feel satisfied with the result. He was correct in every detail, and he thought complacently that he could not but contrast favorably with the appearance of that “roughneck” from Montana—or was it Wyoming?

“What you taking such a hot day to ride for?” Mrs. Appel called when she caught sight of Wallie.

The question jarred on him, and he replied coolly: “I had not observed that it was warmer than usual, Mrs. Appel.”

Without seeming to look, Wallie could see that both Miss Spenceley and Pinkey were on the veranda and regarding him with interest. His pose became a little theatrical while he waited for his mount, striking his riding boot smartly with his crop as he stood in full view of them.

Every one was interested when they saw the horse coming, and a few sauntered over to have a look at him, Miss Spenceley and Pinkey among the others.

“Is that the horse you always ride, Wallie?” inquired Miss Gaskett.

“No; it's a new one I'm going to try out for them,” Wallie replied indifferently.

“Wallie, do be careful!” his aunt admonished him. “I don't like you to ride strange horses.”

Wallie laughed lightly, and as he went down to meet the groom, who was now at the foot of the steps with the horses, he assured her that there was not the least cause for anxiety.

“Why, that's a Western horse!” Miss Spenceley exclaimed. “Isn't that a brand on the shoulder?”

“It looks like it,” Pinkey answered, ruffing the hair, then smoothing it. “Shore it's a brand.” He stepped off a pace to look at it.

“Pardon me, but I think you're mistaken,” Wallie said politely but positively. “The academy buys only thoroughbreds.”

“If that ain't a bronc, I'll eat it,” Pinkey declared bluntly.

“Can you make out the brand?” asked Miss Spenceley.

Pinkey ruffed the hair again and stepped back and squinted. Then his cracked lips stretched in a grin that threatened to start them bleeding:

“Eighty-eight is the way I read it.”

She nodded. “The brand of Cain.”

They both laughed immoderately.

Wallie could see no occasion for merriment, and it nettled him.

“Nevertheless, I maintain that you are in error,” he declared obstinately.

“I doubt if I could set one of them hen-skin saddles,” observed Pinkey, changing the subject.

“Oh, it's very easy if you've been taught properly,” Wallie replied airily.

“Taught? You mean”—wonderingly—“that somebody learned you to ride horseback?”

Wallie smiled patronizingly.

“How else would I know?”

“I was jest throwed on a horse and told to stay there.”

“Which accounts for the fact that you Western riders have no 'form,' if you'll excuse my frankness.”

“Don't mention it,” replied Pinkey, not to be outdone in politeness. “Maybe, before I go, you'll give me some p'inters?”

“I shall be most happy,” Wallie responded, putting his foot in the stirrup. He mounted creditably and settled himself in the saddle.

“Thumb him,” said Miss Spenceley, “and we'll soon settle the argument.”

“How—thumb him? The term is not familiar.”

“Show him, Pinkey.” Her eyes were sparkling, for Wallie's tone implied that the expression was slang and also rather vulgar.

“He'll unload his pack as shore as shootin'.” Pinkey hesitated.

“No time like the present to learn a lesson,” she replied ambiguously.

“Certainly—if there's anything you can teach me.” Wallie's smile said as plain as words that he doubted it. “Mr. Fripp—er—'thumb' him.”

“You're the doctor,” said Pinkey grimly—and “thumbed” him.

The effect was instantaneous. The old horse ducked his head, arched his back, and went at it.

It was over in less time than it requires to tell and Wallie was convinced beyond the question of a doubt that the horse had not been bred in Kentucky. As he described an aërial circle, Wallie had a whimsical notion that his teeth had bitten into his brain and his spine was projected through the crown of his derby hat. Darkness and oblivion came upon him for a moment, and then he found himself being lifted tenderly from a bed of petunias and dusted off by the groom from the riding academy.

The ladies were screaming, but a swift glance showed Wallie not only Mr. Appel, but Mr. Cone and Mr. Budlong with their hands over their mouths and their teeth gleaming between their spreading fingers.

“Coward!” he cried to Pinkey. “You don't dare get on him!”

“Can you ride him 'slick,' Pinkey?” asked Miss Spenceley.

“I'll do it er bust somethin'.” Pinkey's mouth had a funny quirk at the corners. “Maybe it'll take the kinks out of me from travelin'.”

He looked at Mr. Cone doubtfully: “I'm liable to rip up the sod in your front yard a little.”

“Go to it!” cried Mr. Cone, whose sporting blood was up. “There's nothin' here that won't grow again!”

Everybody was trembling, and when Miss Eyester looked at her lips they were white as alabaster, but she meant to see the riding, if she had one of her sinking spells immediately it was over.

When Pinkey swung into the saddle, the horse turned its head around slowly and looked at the leg that gripped him. Pinkey leaned down, unbuckled the throat latch, and slipped off the bridle. Then, as he touched the horse in the flank with his heels, he took off his cap and slapped him over the head with it.

The horse recognized the familiar challenge and accepted it. What he had done to Wallie was only the gamboling of a frisky colt as compared with his efforts to rid his back of Pinkey. Even Helene Spenceley sobered as she watched the battle that followed.

The horse sprang into the air, twisted, and came down stiff-legged—squealing. Now, with his head between his forelegs he shot up his hind hoofs, and at an angle that made all the grip in his rider's knees necessary to his staying in the saddle. Then he brought down his heels again, violently, to bite at Pinkey—who kicked him.

He “weaved,” he “sunfished.” With every trick known to an old outlaw he tried to throw his rider, rearing finally to fall backward and mash to a pulp a bed of Mr. Cone's choicest tulips. But when the horse rose Pinkey was with him, while the spectators, choking with excitement, forgetting themselves and each other, yelled like Apaches.

With nostrils blood-red and distended, his eyes the eyes of a wild animal, now writhing, now crouching, now lying back on his haunches and springing forward with a violence to snap any ordinary vertebra, the horse pitched as if there was no limit to its ingenuity and endurance.

Pinkey's breath was coming in gasps and his color had faded with the terrible jar of it all. Even the uninitiated could see that Pinkey was weakening, and the result was doubtful, when, suddenly, the horse gave up and stampeded. He crashed through the trellis over which Mr. Cone had carefully trained his crimson ramblers, tore through a neat border of mignonette and sweet alysium that edged the driveway, jumped through “snowballs,” lilacs, syringas, and rhododendrons to come to a halt finally conquered and chastened.

The “88” brand has produced a strain famous throughout Wyoming for its buckers, and this venerable outlaw lived up to every tradition of his youth and breeding.

Mrs. C. D. Budlong was shedding tears like a crocodile, without moving a feature. Mr. Budlong put the lighted end of a cigar in his mouth and burned his tongue to a blister, while Miss Eyester dropped into a chair and had her sinking spell and recovered without any one remarking it. In an abandonment that was like the delirium of madness, Mr. Cone went in and lifted Miss Gaskett's cat Cutie out of the plush rocker, where she was leaving hairs on the cushion, and surreptitiously kicked her.

Altogether it was an unforgetable occasion, and only Pinkey seemed unthrilled by it—he dismounted in a businesslike, matter-of-fact manner that had in it neither malice toward the horse nor elation at having ridden him. He felt admiration, if anything, for he said as he rubbed the horse's forehead:

“You shore made me ride, old-timer! You got all the old curves and some new ones. If I had a hat I'd take it off to you. I ain't had such a churnin' sence I set 'Steamboat' fer fifteen seconds. Oh, hullo!” as Wallie advanced with his hand out.

“I congratulate you,” said Wallie, feeling himself magnanimous in view of the way his neck was hurting.

“You needn't,” replied Pinkey good-naturedly. “He durned near 'got' me.”

“It was a very creditable ride indeed,” insisted Wallie, in his most patronizing and priggish manner. He found it very hard to be generous, with Helene Spenceley listening.

“It seemed so, after your performance, Gentle Annie!” snapped Miss Spenceley.

Actually the woman seemed to spit like a cat at him! She had the tongue of a serpent and a vicious temper. He hated her! Wallie removed his hat with exaggerated politeness and decided never to have anything more to say to Miss Spenceley.

CHAPTER V.

“Gentle Annie” Burns His Bridges.

Wallie had told himself emphatically that he would never speak again to Helene Spenceley. That would be an easy matter since she had glared at him, when they had passed as she was going in for breakfast, in a way that would have made him afraid to speak even if he had intended to. To refrain from thinking of her was something different.

He sat on a rustic bench on the Colonial lawn watching the silly robins and wondering why she had called him “Gentle Annie.” It was clear enough that nothing flattering was intended, but what did she mean by it? There was no reason that he could see for her to fly at him—quite the contrary. He had been very generous and gentlemanly, it seemed to him, in congratulating Pinkey when it was due to them that he, Wallie, was thrown into the petunias. The women were making perfect fools of themselves over that Pinkey—they were at it now—he could hear them cackling on the veranda.

He wished the undertow would catch that Spenceley girl. If he should reach her when she was going down for the third time she would have to thank him for saving her and that would about kill her. He decided that he would make a point of bathing when she did, on the very remote chance that it might happen.

“Gentle Annie! Gentle Annie! Gentle Annie!” The name rankled.

Pinkey was crossing the lawn with the obvious intention of joining him.

“Gee!” he exclaimed, sinking down beside Wallie, “I've nearly sprained my tongue answerin' questions. “Is it true that snakes shed their skin, and do the hot pools in the Yellowstone Park freeze in winter? I'm goin' to drift pretty pronto. I can't stand visitin'.”

“Do you like the East, Mr. Fripp?” inquired Wallie formally.

“I'm glad they's a West,” Pinkey replied cryptically.

“You and Miss Spenceley are from the same section, I take it?”

“Yep—Wyomin'.”

“Er—by the way'—Wallie's tone was elaborately casual—“what did she mean yesterday when she called me Gentle Annie?”

Pinkey moved uneasily.

“Could you give me the precise significance?” persisted Wallie.

“I could, but I wouldn't like to,” Pinkey replied dryly.

“Oh, don't spare my feelings,” said Wallie loftily, “there's nothing she could say would hurt them.”

“If that's the way you feel—she meant you were 'harmless.'”

“I trust so,” Wallie responded with dignity.

“I'd ruther be called a—er—a Mormon,” Pinkey observed.

Shocked at the language, Wallie demanded:

“It is, then, an epithet of opprobrium?”

“I can't say as to that,” replied Pinkey judicially, “but she meant you were a 'perfect lady.'”

“Its more than I can say of her!” Wallie retorted, reddening.

Pinkey merely grinned and shrugged a shoulder. He arose a moment later as if the conversation and company alike bored him.

“Well—I'm goin' to pack my war bag and ramble. Why don't you come West and git civilized? With your figger you ought to be good fer somethin'. S'long, feller!”

Naturally, Wallie was not comforted by his conversation with Pinkey. Now he knew himself to have been insulted, and resented it, but along with his indignation was such a feeling of dissatisfaction.with his life as he had never known. His brow contracted while he thought of the monotony of it. Just as this summer would be a duplicate of every other summer, so the winter would be a repetition of the many winters he had spent in Florida with aunt Mary. After a few months at home they would migrate with the robins. Discontent grew within him as he reviewed it. Why couldn't he and aunt Mary do something different for the winter? By George! he would suggest it to her!

He got up with alacrity, cheerful immediately.

She was not on the veranda and Miss Eyester was of the opinion that she had gone to her room to take her tonic.

“I have turned the shoulder, Wallie.” Mrs. Appel held up the sweater triumphantly.

“That's good,” said Wallie, feeling uncomfortable with Miss Spenceley within hearing.

“Wallie,” Mrs. Stott called to him, “will you give me the address of that milliner whose hats you said you liked particularly? Somewhere on Walnut, wasn't it?”

“Sixteenth and Walnut,” Wallie replied shortly.

Miss Gaskett beckoned him.

“Have you seen Cutie, Wallie?”

“No,” curtly.

“When I called her this morning she looked at me with eyes like saucers and simply tore into the bushes. Do you suppose anybody has abused her?”

Mr. Cone, who was standing in the doorway, went back to his desk hastily.

“I'm not in her confidence,” said Wallie with so much sarcasm that they all looked at him,

Miss Spenceley was talking to Mr. Appel, who was listening so attentively that Wallie wondered what she was saying. They were sitting close to the window of the reception room and it occurred to Wallie that there would be no harm in stepping inside and gratifying his curiosity. The conversation was not of a private nature, and in other circumstances he would have joined them, so, on his way to the elevator to find his aunt, he paused a moment to hear what the girl was saying.

Since she was speaking emphatically and a lace curtain was the only barrier, Wallie found out without difficulty:

“I have no use for a squaw man.”

“You mean,” Mr. Appel interrogated, “a white man who marries an Indian woman?”

“Not necessarily. I mean a man who permits a woman to support him without making any effort on his part to do a man's work. He may be an Adonis and gifted to the point of genius, but I have no respect for him. He——”

Wallie remembered the ancient adage, and while he did not consider himself an eavesdropper or believe that Miss Spenceley meant anything personal, nevertheless the shoe fit to such a nicety that he hurried to the elevator. “Squaw man;” the term was as new to him as “Gentle Annie.” His ears flamed as he thought that when Miss Spenceley learned a certain fact about him she would despise him more than ever.

As Miss Eyester had opined, Miss MacPherson was taking her tonic, or about to.

“I've come to make a suggestion, auntie,” Wallie began, with a little diffidence.

“What is it?” Miss MacPherson was shaking the bottle.

“Let's not go South this winter.”

“Where then?” She smiled indulgently as she measured out the medicine.

“Why not California or Arizona?” he suggested.

“I don't believe this tonic helps me a particle.” She made a wry face as she swallowed it.

“That's it,” he declared eagerly. “You need a change. We both do.”

“I'm too set in my ways to enjoy new experiences, and I don't like strangers. No;” she shook her head kindly but firmly; “we will go South as usual.”

“Oh—sugar!” The vehemence with which Wallie uttered the expletive showed the extent of his disappointment. “I'm tired of going to the same places year after year, going to the same thing, seeing the same old fossils!”

“Wallie, you are speaking of my friends, and yours,” she reminded him.

“They're all right, but I like to make new ones. I don't want to go, aunt Mary.”

“Don't you think you are a little ungrateful—in the circumstances.” It was the first time she had ever reminded him of his dependency.

“If you mean I am an ingrate, that is an unpleasant word, aunt Mary.”

“Place your own interpretation upon it, Wallace.”

“Perhaps you think I am not capable of earning my own living?”

“I have not said so.”

“But you mean it!” he cried hotly.

Miss MacPherson was nearly as amazed as Wallie to hear herself saying: “Possibly you had better try it.”

She had taken two cups of strong coffee that morning and her nerves were overstimulated, and perhaps with the intuition of a jealous woman she half suspected that “the girl from Wyoming” had something to do with his restlessness and desire to go West.

Wallie's eyes were blazing when he answered.

“I shall! I shall never be beholden to you for another penny. When I wanted to do something for myself you wouldn't let me. You're not fair, aunt Mary!”

Pale and breathing heavily in their emotion, they looked at each other with hard, angry eyes—eyes in which there was not a trace of the affection which for years had existed between them.

“Suit yourself,” she said finally, and turned her back on him.

Wallie went to his room in a daze, too bewildered to realize immediately what had happened. That he had quarreled with his aunt, permanently, irrevocably, seemed incredible. But he would never eat of her bread of charity again—he had said it. He was sure the break was final.

A sense of freedom came to him gradually as it grew upon him that he was loose from the apron strings that had led him since childhood. He need never again eat food he did not like because it was “good for him.” He could sit in drafts if he wanted to and sneeze his head off. He could put on his woolen underwear when he got darned good and ready. He could swim when there were white caps in the harbor and choose his own clothing.

A fine feeling of exultation swept over Wallie as he strode up and down with an eye to the way he looked in the mirror. He was free of petticoat domination. He was no longer a “squaw man,” and he would not be one again for a million dollars! He would “show” aunt Mary—he would “show” Helene Spenceley—he would “show” everybody!

Wallie opened his eyes one morning with the subconscious feeling that something portentous was impending though he was still too drowsy to remember it. He yawned and stretched languidly and luxuriously on a bed which was the last word in comfort, since Mr. Cone's pride in the Colonial beds was second only to that of his pride in the hotel's reputation for exclusiveness.

A bit of yellow paper on the chiffonier brought Wallie to his full senses as his eyes fell upon it. It was the answer to a telegram he had sent Pinkey Fripp, in Prouty, Wyoming, making inquiries as to the possibility of taking up a homestead.

It read:

Wallie grew warm every time he thought of such a message addressed to him coming over the wire. Though worse than inelegant, and partially unintelligible, it was plain enough that what he wanted was there, if he went for it, and he had replied that Pinkey might look for him shortly in Prouty.

And to-day he was leaving! He was saying good-by forever to the hotel that was like home to him and the friends that were as his own relatives! He had twenty-one hundred dollars in real money—a legacy—and his clothing. In his newborn spirit of independence he wished that he might even leave his clothes behind him, but he had changed his mind when he had figured the cost of buying others.

His aunt had taken no notice of Wallie's preparations for departure. The news of the rupture had spread quickly and the sympathies of the guests were equally divided. All were agreed, however, that if Wallie went West he would soon have enough of it and be back in time to go South for the winter.

Helene Spenceley had left unexpectedly upon the receipt of a telegram, and it was one of Wallie's favorite speculations as to what she would say when she heard he was a neighbor—something disagreeable, probably.

With the solemnity which a person might feel who is planning his own funeral, Wallie arose and made a careful toilet. It would be the last in the luxurious quarters that he had occupied for so many summers. As he took his shower, he wondered what the hotel accommodations would be like in Prouty, Wyoming? Not up to much, he imagined, but he decided that he would. duplicate this bathroom in his own residence as soon as he got his homestead going. Wallie's knowledge of Wyoming was gathered chiefly from an atlas he had borrowed from Mr. Cone.

The atlas stated briefly that it contained ninety-seven thousand eight hundred and ninety square miles, mostly arid, and a population of ninety-two thousand five hundred and thirty-one. It gave the impression that the editors themselves were hazy on Wyoming, which very likely was the truth, since it had been published in Mr. Cone's childhood when the State was a territory.

What the atlas omitted, however, was supplied by Wallie's imagination. When he closed his eyes he could see great herds of cattle—his—with their broad backs glistening in the sunshine, and vast tracts—his also—planted in clover, oats, barley, or whatever it was they grew in that country. For diversion, he saw himself scampering over the country on horseback on visits to the friendly neighbors, entertaining frequently himself and entertained everywhere. As for Helene Spenceley—she would soon learn the manner of man she had belittled!

It was a wrench after all—the going—and the fact that his aunt did not relent, made it the harder. She sat erect and unyielding at the far end of the veranda while he was in the midst of a sympathetic leave-taking from the guests of the Colonial.

“Aw—you'll be back when it gets cold weather,” said Mr. Appel.

“I shall succeed or leave my bones in Wyoming!” Wallie declared.

Mr. Appel snickered:

“They'll help fertilize the soil, which I'm told needs it.” His early struggles had made Mr. Appel callous.

Miss MacPherson, looking straight ahead, gave no indication that she saw her nephew coming.

“Will you say good-by to me, aunt Mary?”

She appeared not to see the hand he put out to her.

“I trust you will have a safe journey, Wallace.” Her voice was a breath from the arctic.

The motor bus had arrived and the chauffeur was piling his luggage on top of it, so, with a final handshake around, Wallie said good-by, perhaps forever, to his friends of the Colonial.

They were all standing with their arms about each other's waists, or with their hands placed affectionately upon each other's shoulders as the bus started, calling good-by and good luck with much waving of handkerchiefs. Only his aunt sat grim-visaged and motionless, refusing to concede so much as a glance in her nephew's direction.

Wallie in turn took off his hat and swung it through the bus window and wafted kisses at the dear, amiable folk of the Colonial until the motor had passed between the stately pillars of the entrance. Then he leaned back with a sigh and the feeling described by all writers worthy the name, of having “burned his bridges behind him.”

CHAPTER VI.

His “Gat.”

“How much 'jack' did you say you got?” Pinkey, an early caller at the Prouty House, sitting on his heel with his back against the wall, awaited with evident interest an answer to this pointed question. He explained further in response to Wallie's puzzled look: “Kale—dinero—the long green—money.”

“Oh,” Wallie replied enlightened, “about eighteen hundred dollars.” He was in his blue silk pajamas, sitting on the iron rail of his bed.

There was no resemblance between this room and the one he had last occupied. The robins'-egg-blue alabastine had scaled, exposing large patches of plaster, and the same thing had happened to the enamel of the washbowl and pitcher. A former occupant, who must have learned his art in the penitentiary, had knotted the lace curtains in such a fashion that no one ever had attempted to untie them; while the prisonlike effect of the iron bed with its dingy pillows and counterpane, and sagging middle, was such as to throw a chill over the spirits of the cheeriest traveler.

It had required all Wallie's will power when he had arrived at midnight, to rise above the depression superinduced by these surroundings. Pinkey's arrival had cheered him wonderfully. Now, when that person observed tentatively that eighteen hundred dollars was “a good little stake,” Wallie blithely offered to count it.

“You got it with you?” Pinkey asked.

Wallie nodded.

“That's chancey,” Pinkey commented. “They's people in the country would stick you up, if they knowed you carried it.”

“I should resist if any one attempted to rob me,” Wallie declared as he sat down on the rail gingerly with his bulging wallet.

“What with?” Pinkey inquired humorously.

Wallie reached under his pillow and produced a pearl-handled revolver of thirty-two caliber.

“Before leaving, I purchased this pistol.”

Pinkey regarded him with a pained expression.

“Don't use that dude word, feller. Say 'gun,' 'gat,' 'six-shooter,' anything, but don't ever say 'pistol' above a whisper.”

A little crestfallen, Wallie laid it aside and commenced to count his money. Pinkey, he could see, was not impressed by the weapon.

“Yes, eighteen hundred exactly. I spent two hundred and fifty dollars purchasing a camping outfit.”

Pinkey looked at him incredulously. He was thinking of the frying pan, coffeepot, and lard kettle of which his own consisted. He made no comment, however, until Wallie mentioned his portable bathtub, which, while expensive, he declared he considered indispensable.

“Yes,” Pinkey agreed dryly, “you'll be needin' a portable bathtub something desperate. I wisht I had one. The last good wash I took was in Crystal Lake the other side of the Bear Tooth Mountain. When I was done I stood out till the sun dried me, then brushed the mud off with a whisk broom.”

“That must have been uncomfortable,” Wallie observed politely. “I hope you will feel at liberty to use my tub whenever you wish.”

“That won't be often enough to wear it out,” said Pinkey candidly. “But you'd better jump into your pants and git over to the land office. We want to nail that one hundred and sixty before some other 'scissorbill' beats you to it.”

Under Pinkey's guidance, Wallie went to the land office which was in the rear of a secondhand store kept by Mr. Alvin Tucker, who was also the land commissioner.

The office was in the rear and there were two routes by which it was possible to get in touch with Mr. Tucker. One might gain admittance by walking over the bureaus, center tables, and stoves that blocked the front entrance, or he could crawl on his hands and knees through a large roll of chicken wire wedged into the side door of the establishment.

The main-traveled road, however, was over the tables and bureaus, and this was chosen by Pinkey and Wallie, who found Mr. Tucker at his desk attending to the State's business. Mr. Tucker had been blacking a stove and had not yet removed the traces of his previous occupation, so when Pinkey introduced him, his hand was of a color to make Wallie hesitate for the fraction of a second before taking it.

Mr. Tucker being a man of great good nature took no offense, although he could scarcely fail to notice Wallie's hesitation; on the contrary, he inquired with the utmost cordiality:

“Well, gents, what can I do for you this morning?” His tone implied that he had the universe at his disposal.

“He wants to file on the one hundred and sixty on Skull Crick that Boice Bill abandoned,” said Pinkey.

Tucker's gaze shifted.

“I'm not sure it's open to entry,” he replied hesitatingly.

“Yes, it is. His time was up a month ago, and he ain't even fenced it.”

“You know he's quarrelsome,” Tucker suggested. “Perhaps it would be better to ask his intentions.”

“He ain't none,” Pinkey declared bluntly. “He only took it up to hold for Canby, and he's never done a lick of work on it.”

“Of course it's right in the middle of one of Canby's leases,” Tucker argued, “and you can scarcely blame him for not wanting it homesteaded. Why don't you select a place that won't conflict with his interests?”

“Why should we consider his interests? He don't think of anybody else's when he wants anything,” Pinkey demanded.

“Your friend bein' a newcomer, I thought he wouldn't want to locate in the middle of trouble.”

“He can take care of himself,” Pinkey declared confidently though, as they both glanced at Wallie, there seemed nothing in his appearance to justify his friend's optimism.

Tucker brought his feet down with the air of a man who had done his duty and washed his hands of consequences; he prepared to make out the necessary papers. As he handled the documents he left finger prints of such perfection on the borders that they resembled identification marks for classification under the Bertillon system, and Wallie was far more interested in watching him than in his intimation that there was trouble in the offing if he made this filing.

He paid his fees and filled out his application, leaving Tucker's office with a new feeling of importance and responsibility. One hundred and sixty acres was not much of a ranch as ranches go in Wyoming, but it was a beginning. As soon as they were out of the building, Wallie inquired casually:

“Does Miss Spenceley live in my neighborhood?”

“Across the mounting!” Which reply conveyed nothing to Wallie. Pinkey added: “I punch cows for their outfit.”

“What did she say when she heard I was coming?”

“She laughed to kill herself.”

In the meantime Tucker, in guarded language, was informing Canby of the entry by telephone. From the sounds which came through the receiver he had the impression that the land baron was pulling the telephone out by the roots in his exasperation at the negligence of his hireling who he had supposed had done sufficient work to hold it.

“I'll attend to it!” he answered.

Tucker thought there was no doubt about that, and he had a worthy feeling of having earned the yearly stipend which he received from Canby for these small services.

“We'd better sift along and git out there,” Pinkey advised when they were back at the Prouty House.

“To-day?”

“You bet you! That's no dream about Boise Bill bein' ugly, and he might try to hold the one hundred and sixty if he got wind of your filing.”

“In that event?”

“In that event,” Pinkey mimicked, “he's more'n likely to run you off, unless you got the sand to fight fer it. That's what I meant in my telegram.”

“Oh,” said Wallie, enlightened. “'Sand' and—er—intestines are synonymous terms in your vernacular?”

Pinkey stared at him.

“Say, feller, you'll have to learn to sling the buckskin before we can understand each other. Anyhow, as I was sayin', you got a good proposition in this one hundred and sixty if you can hold it.”

“If I am within my rights I shall adhere to them at all hazards,” said Wallie. “At first, however, I shall use moral suasion.”

“Can't you say things plainer?” Pinkey demanded crossly. “Why don't you talk United States? You sound like a fifth reader. If you mean you aim to argue with him, he'll knock you down with a neck yoke while you're gittin' started.”

“In that event, if he attempted violence, I should use my pistol—my 'gat'—and stop him.”

“In that event,” Pinkey relished the expression, “in that event I shall carry a shovel along to bury you.”

Riding a horse from the livery stable and accompanied by Pinkey driving two pack horses ahead of him, Wallie left the Prouty House shortly after noon, followed by comments of a jocular nature from the bystanders.

“How far is it?” inquired Wallie, who was riding his English saddle and “posting.”

“Twenty for me and forty for you, if you aim to ride that way,” said Pinkey: “Why don't you let out them sturrups and shove your feet in 'em?”

Wallie preferred his own style of riding, but observed that he hoped never to have another such fall as he had had at the Colonial.

“A feller that's never been throwed has never rid,” said Pinkey sagely, and added: “You'll git used to it.”

Once they left the town they turned toward the mountains and conversation ceased shortly, for not only were they obliged to ride single file through the sagebrush and cacti but the trot of the livery horse soon left Wallie with no breath nor desire to continue it.

The vast tract they were traversing belonged to Canby, so Pinkey informed him, and as mile after mile slipped by he was amazed at the extent of it. Through illegal fencing, leasing, and driving small stockmen from the country by various methods, Canby had obtained control of a range of astonishing circumference, and Wallie's homestead was nearly in the middle of it.

Although they had eaten before leaving Prouty, it was not more than two o'clock before Wallie began to wonder what they would have for supper. They were not making fast time, for his horse stumbled badly and the pack horses, both old and stiff, traveled slowly, so at three o'clock the elusive mountains seemed as far away as when they had started. Unable to refrain any longer, Wallie called to ask how much farther.

“Twelve miles, or some such matter;” Pinkey added: “I'm so hungry I don't know where I'm goin' to sleep to-night. That restaurant is reg'lar stummick robbers.”

By four o'clock every muscle in Wallie's body was aching, but his fatigue was nothing as compared with his hunger. He tried to admire the scenery, to think of his magoe prospects, of Helene Spenceley, but his thoughts always came back quickly to the subject of food and a wonder as to how soon he could get it. In his regular, well-fed life he never had imagined, much less known, such a gnawing, all-consuming hunger. His destination represented only something to eat, and it seemed to him they never would get there.

“What will we have for supper, Pinkey?” he shouted finally.

Pinkey replied promptly:

“I was thinkin' we'd have ham and gra-vy and cow-puncher perta-toes; and maybe I'll build some biscuit, if we kin wait fer 'em.”

“Let's not have biscuit—let's have crackers.”

Ham and gravy and cow-puncher potatoes! Wallie rode along with his mouth watering and visualizing the menu until Pinkey came to a halt and said with a dramatic gesture:

“There's your future home, Mr. MacPherson! That's what I call a reg'lar paradise.”

As Mr. MacPherson stared at the Elysium indicated, endeavoring to discover the resemblance, surprise kept him silent. So far as he could see, it in nowise differed from the arid plain across which they had ridden. It was a pebbly tract, covered with sagebrush and cacti, which dropped abruptly to a creek bed that had no water in it. Filled with sudden misgivings, he asked feebly:

“What's it good for?”

“Look at the view!” said Pinkey impatiently.

“I can't eat scenery.”

“It'll be a great place for dry farmin'.”

Wallie looked at a crack big enough to swallow him and observed humorously:

“I should judge so.”

“You see,” Pinkey explained enthusiastically, “bein' clost to the mountings, the snow lays late in the spring and all the moisture they is you git it.”

“I see.” Wallie nodded comprehensively. “Why didn't you take it up yourself, Pinkey?”

“Oh, I got to make a livin'.”

There was food for thought in the answer and Wallie pondered it as he got stiffly out of the saddle.

“Can I be of any assistance?” he asked politely.

“You can git the squaw ax and hack out a place fer a bed ground and you can hunt up some firewood and take a bucket out of the pack and go to the crick and locate some water while I'm finding a place to picket these horses.”

Because it would hasten supper, it seemed to Wallie that wood and water were of more importance than clearing a place to sleep, so he collected a small pile of twigs and dead sagebrush, then took an aluminum kettle from his camping utensils and walked along the bank of Skull Creek, looking for a pool which contained enough water to fill the kettle. He finally saw one, and planting his heels in a dirt slide, shot like a toboggan some twenty feet to the bottom. Filling his kettle, he walked back over the bowlders looking for a more convenient place to get up than the one he had descended.

He was abreast of the camp before he knew it.

“Whur you goin'?” Pinkey, who had returned, was hanging over the edge watching him stumbling along with his kettle of water.

“I'm hunting a place to get up,” said Wallie tartly.

“How did you git down?”

“'Way back there.”

“Why didn't you git up the same way?”

“Couldn't—without spilling the water.”

“I'll git a rope and snake you.”

“This doesn't seem like a very convenient location,” said Wallie querulously.

“You can cut out some toe holts to-morrow,” Pinkey suggested cheerfully. “The ground has got such a good slope to drain the corrals is the reason I picked it to build on.”

This explanation reconciled Wallie to the difficulty of getting water. To build a fire and make the coffee was the work of a moment, but it seemed twenty-four hours to Wallie, sitting on a saddle blanket watching every move like a hungry bird dog. He thought he never had smelled anything so savory as the odor of potatoes and onions cooking, and when the aroma of boiling coffee was added to it!

Pinkey stopped slicing ham to point at the sunset.

“Ain't that a great picture?”

“Gorgeous,” Wallie agreed without looking.

“If I could paint——”

“Does it take long to make gravy?” Wallie demanded impatiently.

“Not so very. I'll git things goin' and let you watch 'em while I go and take a look at them buzzard heads. If a horse ain't use to bein' on picket he's liable to go scratchin' his ear and git caught and choke hisself.”

“Couldn't we eat first?” Wallie asked plaintively.

“No, I'll feel easier if I know they ain't tangled. Keep stirrin' the gravy so it won't burn on you,” he called back. “And set the coffee off in a couple of minutes.”

Wallie was on his knees absorbed in his task of keeping the gravy from scorching when a sound made him turn quickly and look behind him.

A large man on a small, white pony was riding toward him. He looked unprepossessing, even at a distance, and he did not improve as he came closer. His nose was long, his jaw was long, his hair needed cutting and was greasy, while his close-set blue eyes had a decidedly mean expression. There was a rifle slung under his stirrup leather and a six-shooter in its holster on his hip was a conspicuous feature of his costume.

He sat for a moment, looking, then dropped the bridle reins as he dismounted and sauntered up to the camp fire. Wallie was sure that it was Boise Bill, from a description Pinkey had given him, and his voice was slightly tremulous as he said:

“Good evening.”

The stranger paid no attention to his greeting. He was surveying Wallie in his riding breeches and puttees with an expression that was at once amused and insolent.

“Looks like you aimed to camp a spell, from your layout,” he observed finally.

“Yes, I am here permanently.” Wallie wondered if the stranger could see that his hand was trembling as he stirred the gravy.

“Indeed! How you got that figgered?” asked the man mockingly.

Wallie replied with dignity:

“This is my homestead; I filed on it this morning.”

“Looks like you'd 'a' found out if it was open to entry, before you went to all that trouble.” Boise Bill shuffled his feet so that a cloud of the light wood ashes rose and settled in the gravy. Wallie frowned but picked them out patiently.

“I did,” he answered, moving the pan.

“Then somebody's lied to you, fer I filed on this ground and I ain't abandoned it.”

“You've never done any work on it, and Mr. Tucker has my filing fees and application, so I cannot see that there is any argument about it.”

Wallie was very polite and conciliatory.

“You'll find that filin' is one thing and holdin' is another in this man's country.” Quite deliberately he scuffled up another cloud of cinders.

“I will appreciate it,” said Wallie sharply, “if you won't kick ashes in my gravy!”

“And I will appreciate it,” Boise Bill mocked him, “if you'll git your junk together and move off my land in about twenty minutes.”

“I refuse to be intimidated,” said Wallie, paling. “I shall begin a contest suit if necessary.”

“I allus fight first and contest afterward.” Boise Bill lifted his huge foot and kicked over first the pan of ham and then the gravy, Wallie stood for a second staring at the tragedy. Then his nerves jumped and he shook in a passion which seemed to blind and choke him.

Boise Bill had drawn his six-shooter and Wallie was looking into the barrel of it. His homestead, his life, was in jeopardy, but this seemed nothing at all compared to the fact that this ruffian, with deliberate malice had kicked over his supper!

“Have I got to try a chunk o' lead on you?” Boise Bill snarled at him.

For answer, Wallie stooped swiftly and gripped the long handle of the frying pan. He swung it with all his strength as he would have swung a tennis racket. Knocking the six-shooter from Boise Bill's hand he jumped across the fire at him. Scarcely conscious of what he was doing in the frenzy of rage that consumed him, Wallie whipped his little pearl-handled pistol from his breeches pocket and as Boise Bill opened his mouth in an exclamation of astonishment, Wallie shoved it down his throat, yelling shrilly that if he moved an eyelash he would pull the trigger!

This was the amazing sight that stopped Pinkey in his tracks as effectively as a bullet.

Wallie heard his step and asked plaintively but without turning:

“What'll I do with him?”

“As you are, until I pull his fangs!”

Pinkey threw the shells from Boise Bill's rifle and removed the cartridges from his six-shooter. Handing the latter back to him, he said laconically:

“Drift! And don't you take the beef-herd gait, neither.”

The malevolent look Boise Bill sent over his shoulder was wasted on Wallie who was picking out of the ashes the ham for which he had stood ready to shed his blood.

CHAPTER VII.

Neighbors.

The modest herring had been the foundation of the great Canby fortune. Small and unpretentious, the herring had swum in the icy waters of the Maine coast until transformed into a French sardine by Canby, senior. It had brought wealth and renown to the shrewd old Yankee, who was alleged to have smelled of herring even in his coffin, but the Canby family were not given to boasting of the source of their income to strangers, and by the time Canby, junior, was graduated from Harvard they were fairly well deodorized.

In the East, many things had conspired to make the young Canby the misanthrope and recluse he had come to be in Wyoming, where he was fully aided and abetted in his desire for seclusion by his neighbors, who disliked him so thoroughly that they went out of their way to avoid speaking to him.

Having been graduated without distinction, he concentrated his efforts upon an attempt to become one of a New England coterie that politely but firmly refused to do more than admit his existence. In pursuance of his ambition he built a castlelike residence and specialized in orchards and roses, purchased a yacht, and became an exhibitor at the horse show. Society praised his roses, but their admiration did not extend to Canby; he went on solitary cruises in his floating palace, and the horse show, which had provided an open sesame to others, in his case was a failure.

Finally he married a girl who had the entrée to the circle he coveted, but his wife received invitations which did not include her husband. The divorce court ended the arrangement and Canby had the privilege of paying a king's ransom in alimony into one of Boston's first families.

Petty, unscrupulous, overbearing, Canby never attributed his failure to the proper cause, which was his unpleasant personality, but regarded it as a conspiracy on the part of “society” to defeat him in his ambition and accordingly he came to hate it.

When he was not traveling he spent his time on the feudal estate he had created in Wyoming, where he had no visitors except Helene Spenceley and her brother, who came occasionally when invited. Protecting himself from invasion from the smaller cattlemen and homesteaders was in the nature of a recreation to Canby who had various methods of ridding himself of their presence.

Boise Bill wads one of those whom he kept for the purpose of intimidating prospective settlers and was considered by him his ablest lieutenant. Therefore when that person returned and stated that the job of running off the newcomer was one he did not care to tackle further, Canby could not fail to be impressed by the declaration.

Among traits less agreeable, Boise Bill had a strong sense of humor, albeit of a somewhat ghoulish brand, usually. As he rode back to report to Canby, the ludicrous side of the encounter grew on him until it outweighed the chagrin he first had felt at getting the worst of it.

Thinking of Wallie in his “dude” clothes, his face pale and his eyes gleaming, swinging the frying pan in his rage at the loss of his supper, when a more experienced man would have thrown up his hands promptly, Boise Bill slapped his leg and rocked in the saddle.

“That's the closest queak I ever had; he might 'a' trembled his gun off and killed me!” he chuckled.

To Canby he declared with a face that was unsmiling and solemn:

“I 'low I got my share of nerve when it comes to a show-down, and I ain' no skim-milk runt, neither, but that nester—he's a giant—and hos-tile as they make 'em! He had me lookin' at my hole card from the outset.”

“Are you afraid of him?” Canby demanded incredulously.

“I wouldn't say I'm actually afraid of him, but I got an old mother in southern Idyho that's dependin' on me, and I can't afford to take chances.”

“I'll go myself,” said Canby curtly.

“Don't let him git the drop on you,” Boise Bill warned him. “I never see anybody so quick as he is. He had out his weepon and was over the fire at me before I knew what was happenin',” with conviction. “He gits 'ringy'—that feller.”

Canby's cold, gray eyes glittered, though he said nothing of his intentions.

Pinkey put up Wallie's silk tent and staked it, showed him how to hobble and picket his horse and to make baking-powder biscuit, and left him.

“It'll be lonesome at first, and the work'll come hard on you, but you'll be jest as happy as if you was in your right mind, onct you git used to it,” he had assured Wallie.

“If only I had a congenial neighbor,” sighed Wallie, “it would make a great difference.”

“There's Canby—you might call on him,” Pinkey suggested, grinning. “Or if you ketch yourself pickin' at the bedclothes you can saddle up and scamper over and see me. 'Tain't fur—forty miles across the mounting. Jest below that notch—you can't miss it.”

Wallie had looked at the notch often since then. He was staring at it the evening Canby rode down on him—staring and thinking so hard of Helene Spenceley that Canby had checked his horse and was looking at him before he saw him. It would be impossible to say which was the more astonished.

Instead of the fearsome person Canby had anticipated, he saw one so different and at the same time so extraordinary that he could not immediately collect himself.

Wallie's trunks had followed him, together with a supply of provisions, and now, his day's work done, he was sitting in front of his tent on a patent camp chair garbed in whatsoever had come handiest. Canby's eyes rested upon a mild-looking young man in a purple silk lounging robe, hob-nailed mountain boots, and a yachting cap with a black, patent-leather visor. He was smoking a cigarette with a gold tip and a monogram, held in a hand that was white and carefully manicured.

In his surprise, Canby said: “Good evening” almost amiably.

Wallie in turn saw a visitor who looked as if he might just have returned from a canter through Central Park or the Wissahickon. His appearance was so homelike and familiar that Wallie went forward with a radiant smile of welcome. Before he knew it Canby found himself shaking hands vigorously with the person he had come to quarrel with.

Wallie was sure that it was Canby, but it flashed through his mind that, perhaps, he was not so black as he was painted and that Pinkey was given to exaggeration, and that very likely Boise Bill had acted upon his own initiative. At any rate, after four days of solitude Wallie would have been delighted to see his Satanic Majesty. So, with his most engaging smile, he invited Canby to dismount and stated that his name was “MacPherson.”

Canby could do nothing less than give his name also, though he refused the invitation. Whereupon Wallie declared heartily:

“I take this as very nice and neighborly of you, Mr. Canby, and please believe I appreciate it!”

Canby bowed, but said nothing.

“You see, I'm a newcomer,” Wallie babbled, “and I have so many things to learn that you can teach me. I consider myself fortunate in having a neighbor of your experience, and if you will let me I shall come to you for advice often.”

“Don't hesitate to call on me.” In Canby's eyes there was something like a glint of amusement.

Wallie went on guilelessly, finding it an extreme relief after his enforced silence, to have an ear to talk into.

“The fact is,” confidentially, “I may not look it but I am a good deal of a tenderfoot.”

“Indeed?” Canby raised a politely surprised eyebrow.

“Yes,” he prattled on, “I am totally ignorant of agricultural matters; but I hope to learn and make a good thing, ultimately, out of this dry-farming proposition. By mixing brains with industry I hope by next fall to get an ample return upon my money and labor. I trust I am not too optimistic?”

“It would not seem so,” Mr. Canby replied guardedly. “How are you fixed for horses?”

“I was just going to ask you about that,” Wallie exclaimed. “I want to plow and haul some fence posts and I shall need horses. Can you recommend a team that would suit me?”

“Next Thursday at two o'clock there will be a stock sale at my place, and I have no doubt that you will be able to pick up something there for your purpose.”

“That's splendid!” Wallie cried delightedly. “I shall seek you out, Mr. Canby, and ask you to assist me in making a selection. I've been thinking of buying a cow, too. This is rare good luck, isn't it, to be able to purchase what I need, without going so far for it!”

“I shall be present—hunt me up—two o'clock, Thursday.”

With a smile and a nod Canby gathered up his reins and departed, while Wallie with a glowing face looked after him and declared aloud:

“That's what I call real Western sociability!”

CHAPTER VIII.

Cutting His Eyeteeth.

A widely advertised stock sale was an event in the country, for the two-fold reason that it furnished the opportunity for neighbors, with fifty and more miles between them, to exchange personal news and experiences and also to purchase blooded animals for considerably less than they could have been imported.

This was particularly true of the Canby sale, where the “culls” both in horses and cattle, were better than the best animals of the majority of the small stockmen and ranchers. It was the custom, also, for such persons as had a few head of horses or cattle to dispose of, but not enough for a sale of their own, to bring them to be auctioned off with Canby's. So it had come to pass that the stock sale at Canby's ranch was second only in importance to the county fair.

Therefore Wallie, whose notion of a stock sale was of the vaguest, was much surprised when after riding in the direction his visitor had indicated and spending hours hunting for gates in wire fences, he came upon an assembly of a size he would not have believed possible in that sparsely populated district.

There were Ford cars which might have been duplicates of Henry's first model—with trailers containing the overflow of children—together with the larger cars of the more prosperous or more extravagant. Top buggies were in evidence, relics of the Victorian period, shipped out from Iowa and Nebraska—serviceable vehicles that had done duty when their owners were “keeping company.” Lumber wagons were plentiful, with straw and quilts in the bottom to serve as shock absorbers, while saddle horses were tied to every hitching post and cottonwood.

When Wallie arrived in his riding boots and breeches, he immediately shared attention with a large, venerable-looking Durham that was being auctioned. The Durham, however, returned the stare of the crowd with blasé eyes which said that he had seen all of life he wanted to and did not care what further happened, while Wallie felt distinctly uncomfortable at the attention he attracted, and wished he might find Canby.

As he stood speculating as to whether the folds of skin around the Durham's neck might be an indication of his age—a year for a fold, after the manner of snakes' rattles—his attention was diverted to a group that was interested in the efforts of one of its members to pry a horse's mouth open. It seemed to Wallie an excellent opportunity to learn something which might be of future use to him, so he joined it.

A man who looked capable of selling a runaway horse to his grandmother was saying emphatically:

“Eight, next spring, I tell you. We raised her a pet on the ranch, so I ought to know what I'm talkin' about.”

The person who had managed to separate the horse's jaws laughed uproariously:

“If she ever sees sixteen again——”

A piping voice from the group interjected itself into the conversation. It came from under the limp brim of a hat that drooped to the speaker's shoulders.

“Why, I knowed that harse when I first come to the country. She was runnin' with her mother over in the Bighorns, and Bear George at Tensleep owned her. Some said that Frank McMannigle's runnin' harse, Left Hand, was her father, and others said she was jest a ketch colt, but I dunno. Her mother was a sorrel with a star in her forehead and the Two-pole-punkin' brand on her left shoulder. If I ain't mistaken, she had one white hind stockin', and they was a wire cut above her hock that was kind of a blemish.

“She got a ringbone, and they had to kill her, but Bear George sold the colt, this mare here, to a feller at Kaysee over on Powder River and he win quite considerable money on her. It was about thirteen years ago that I last seen her, but I knowed her the minute I laid eyes on her. She et musty hay one winter and got the tizic, but you never would know it unless you run her. One of her stifle j'ints——”

The mare's owner interrupted at this juncture:

“You jest turn your mouth on, don't you, Tex, and go off and leave it?”

“I happened to know a little somethin' about this harse,” apologetically began Tex, whose other name was McGonnigle, “so I thought——”

“So you thought you'd butt in and queer the sale of it. I suppose you'd suffer somethin' horrible if there was a horse deal on and you had to keep your mouth shut?”

Mr. McGonnigle protested feebly that he had no such idea when he gave the horse's history, and Wallie was much interested in the wrangle, but he thought he caught a glimpse of Canby through one of the doorways of a stable, so he hurried across the yard and found him in conversation with Boise Bill, who was grooming a work horse which quite evidently was to be auctioned.

Boise Bill grinned when he saw Wallie and nodded. Canby stepped out and greeted Wallie with some affability.

“Ive been watching for you. Have you bid on anything?”

“Not yet. But I saw a fine-looking cow that I mean to buy, if she is all she ought to be,” Wallie replied with a touch of importance. “It seems to me that a good cow will help out wonderfully. I am very fond of milk, and it will be useful in cooking. With a cow and a hen or two——”

Canby and Wallie crossed the yard to where a mild-eyed Jersey was being dressed in a halter preparatory to being led forward and put up at auction.

“Will you be good enough to permit me to examine this animal?” Wallie asked of her caretaker.

“Shore,” he replied heartily, though he looked puzzled.

Wallie drew off his riding gloves and stepped up briskly in a professional manner and pried open the mouth of the protesting cow.

He exclaimed as he let go abruptly:

“Why—she's old! I don't want her. She hasn't a single tooth left in her upper jaw. It's a fortunate thing I looked at her.”

A small boy roosting on the corral snickered. The cow's guardian smiled broadly and openly and deliberately winked at Canby.

Offended, Wallie demanded:

“Am I in error as to her age?”

“Well—if a cow ever had a set of teeth in her upper jaw she'd be in a side show. They don't have 'em. This cow is only three—a young animal.”

“That's true,” Canby assented.

“I declare! It seems very curious!” Wallie exclaimed, astounded. “I fear I have much to learn.”

“This is a good place to learn it,” observed the cow's valet.

Wallie bought the Jersey at private sale and, needless to say, paid its full value.

“She'll be fresh in January,” the man said to him.

Wallie looked bewildered, so the other explained further:

“She'll have a calf.” He said it in such a confidential manner that Wallie thought it was a secret and lowered his voice to answer:

“I'm glad of it.” He had a notion that he had gotten the best of Canby and wished that Miss Spenceley and the Colonial folk knew he had made a shrewd bargain and gotten a herd started. To Canby, who accompanied him on his tour of inspection, he said eagerly: “Where I wish your assistance is in the selection of my work horses. What would you advise?”

“That was a good horse Boise Bill was currying,” he suggested.

“Yes, I noticed him. Is there another like him?”

“I believe he is one of a team.”

Canby was correct in his surmise. The pair were well matched and, impressed by their looks and strength, Wallie was delighted and determined to have them, if possible.

“Fourteen hundred is a good weight for your purpose—above that they are apt to be clumsy,” said Canby.

Wallie agreed enthusiastically.

“My own idea exactly. You see, I'll have to use them for driving as well as working, until I can afford a motor.”

The gathering was composed mostly of good, honest folk but plain ones. They did, however, seem to know exactly what they were buying and why they wanted it, and Wallie was fearful that a pair of such exceptional horses would be run up to a figure beyond his resources. He wished they would bring them out and end the suspense which was momentarily growing greater as he thought of losing them.

Boise Bill drove the pair from the stable finally, just as a powerful machine arrived and took a place in the outer circle. New arrivals had no interest at the moment for Wallie, who was as nervous as a young opera singer. As Boise Bill walked behind the team slapping them with a rope end to drive them forward, it occurred to Wallie that it would have been much simpler to have led them, but as every one had his own way of doing things in this country, he gave no further thought to the matter.

If he had not been so anxious and intent upon what was about to happen, he might also have observed an interchange of knowing looks among the gentlemen whose clothes were secured mostly with shingle nails and baling wire.

The team looked all the auctioneer declared them to be as they stood head to head—young, strong, perfectly matched—and he defied all Wyoming to find a blemish on them. The gentlemen in patched overalls seemed willing to take his word for it, since no one stepped forward to examine the team, and they listened with such attention while he extolled their virtues that it sickened Wallie, who already felt the thrill of ownership as he looked at them.

“The greatest pullers in the State!” The auctioneer made a point of it, repeating it several times for emphasis.

Wallie scanned the faces of the crowd to see if he could detect any special interest that would denote a rival bidder, and he wished the auctioneer would stop harping on their good qualities. It surprised him a little that he saw none of his own eagerness reflected in the varied expressions, also it relieved him somewhat.

“How high do you think I should go?” he asked of his friend and adviser.

“That depends on how badly you want them.”

“They suit me exactly.”

“Horses of that class are selling around five hundred dollars, but you might venture a little more, since you like them.”

“That's just about what I am able to pay. My goodness, but I hope I'm not outbid!”

“How much am I offered for this pair of magnificent young horses?” asked the auctioneer ingratiatingly.

Wallie, who had not had such a case of stage fright since he first sang in public—“Oh, That We Two were Maying,” bid instantly:

“Two hundred dollars!” His voice sounded like the squeak in a telephone receiver.

The auctioneer cupped his hand behind his ear and leaned forward:

“What?”

The incredulity in his tone prompted Wallie to raise the bid to two hundred and twenty-five when he repeated it.

The auctioneer struck his forehead with his clenched fist and staggered back dramatically, demanding: “Am I insulted?”

“That ain't possible,” croaked a voice among the spectators.

“Two hundred and fifty!” The bid came from a ministerial-looking person who was known as a kind of veterinary occasionally employed by Canby.

“Three hundred!” Wallie challenged him.

“That's more like it, but still an insult to these noble brutes I'm selling. Who says three and a quarter?”

“And a quarter!” came from the veterinary.

“And a quarter—and a quarter—gentlemen, what ails you?” He looked at “the bone and sinew of the nation,” who prodded each other.

“Three hundred and fifty,” Wallie responded.

“Three-fifty! Boost her faster, gentlemen! Boost her right along! Am I offered four hundred?”

“Four hundred!” The bid was the veterinary's.

Wallie quavered:

“Four hundred and fifty!”

“Five hundred!” his opponent came back at him.

Wallie hesitated.

“Think of it! Going for five hundred!”

The auctioneer looked at Wallie, who could not have been paler in his coffin.

“Five twenty-five!”

“Good! Now, sir,” to the veterinary.

“Five-fifty!”

He turned to Wallie:

“Am I done, gentlemen?”

Wallie stared at him, his throat too dry to answer.

“Must I give away the best pullin' team in the State for a puny, piddlin' five hundred and fifty dollars?” he pleaded.

“Six hundred!” Wallie cried in desperation.

With the bid Canby raised his hat and ran his fingers through his hair casually and the veterinary stopped bidding.

“Done!” cried the auctioneer. “Sold to Mr.—the name, please—ah, MacPherson, for six hundred dollars. A bargain!”

While Wallie stood trying to realize his good fortune and that he was the owner of as good a pair of work horses as ever looked through a halter, a figure that made his heart jump came swiftly forward, and with her hands in the pockets of her long motor coat, stopped in front of his team and scrutinized them closely.

Helene Spenceley looked from one of the horses to the other. She saw the dilated pupils, the abnormally full forehead, the few coarse hairs growing just above the eyelid, and they told her what she had suspected.

“I am sorry I did not know it was you who was bidding on these horses,” she said, turning to Wallie.

“Did you want them, Miss Spenceley? I am sorry——”

“Want them? You couldn't give them to me. They are locoed!”

“Locoed!” He could only stare at her, hoping never again to feel such dismay as filled him at that moment.

He had only the vaguest notion as to what “locoed” meant, but it was very clear that it was something highly undesirable. And he had been cheated by Canby, who had known of it and advised him to buy them! Such duplicity was without his experience, and sickened him nearly as much as the thought of the six hundred dollars he had invested in horses so radically wrong that Helene Spenceley would not take them as a gift.

The single thought which came to solace him as he stood humiliated and panic-stricken was that she resented the dishonest trick that had been played upon him.

Canby came forward to greet her, with his hand out. She ignored it and said indignantly:

“I should have spoiled this sale for you, Mr. Canby, if I had seen who was bidding on these locoed horses.”

Though Canby flushed, he shrugged a shoulder and replied callously:

“We all had to get our eyeteeth cut when we came to the country.”

CHAPTER IX.

{{heading|}The Best Pulling Team in the State.} Leading the cow, and aided by “Tex” McGonnigle, who boasted that he had a heart as big as the country he lived in and was willing to prove it by helping him with the locoed horses, Wallie made fair progress as far as the gate in the last wire fence, where Tex had to leave him.

“'Tain't fur now,” said that person, passing over the rope with a knot in the end with which he had belabored the horses he had driven ahead of him. “Mog along stiddy and you'd ought to make it by sundown.”

“I think I'll lead 'em,” Wallie remarked.

“Locoed horses won't lead—you've got to drive 'em.”

Nevertheless, on the chance that Tex might not know everything, Wallie tried it after his helper had galloped in another direction.

“The best pulling team in the State!” the auctioneer had declared, and truthfully. Wallie had a notion they could have moved the capitol building if they had laid back on it as they did their halters when he tried to lead them.

There was nothing for it but to tie their heads together and drive them as Tex had done, but with even less success. They missed either Tex's voluble and spicy encouragement or the experienced hand which laid on the rope end, but the chief difficulty seemed to be that they were of different minds as to the direction which they should take, and since the cow was of still another, Wallie was confronted with a difficult situation.

Dragging the mild-eyed Jersey, which had developed an incredible obstinacy with the cessation of Tex's Comanche yells behind her, Wallie applied the rope he had inherited, with the best imitation he could give of the performance, but futilely.

The cow, and the horses pulling in opposite directions, went around and around in a circle until the trampled earth looked as if it had been the site of a cider press or a circus. After they had milled for twenty minutes without advancing a step, Wallie lost patience.

“Oh, sugar!” he cried. “This is certainly very, very annoying!”

The cow was as much an obstacle to the continuance of their journey as the horses, since, bawling at intervals, she planted her feet and allowed her neck to be stretched until Wallie was fearful that it would separate, leaving only her gory head in the halter.

With this unpleasant possibility confronting him, Wallie shrank from putting too much strain upon it, with the result that the cow learned that if she bawled loud enough and laid back hard enough, he would ease up on the rope by which he was dragging her.

Wallie had been taught from infancy that kindness was the proper method of conquering animals, therefore he addressed the cow in tones of saccharine sweetness and with a persuasive manner that would have charmed a bird off a tree.

“Bossy! Bossy! Good bossy!” he cajoled her.

Immune to flattery, she looked at him with an expression which reminded him of a servant girl who knows she is giving notice at an inopportune time. Then she planted her feet still deeper in the sand and bawled at him.

“Darn it!” he cried finally in his exasperation.

As he sat helpless in his dilemma, wondering what to do next, an idea occurred to him which was so clever and feasible that he lost no time in executing it.

If he tied the cow to the stirrup of his saddle and she showed no disposition to escape, then he could walk and drive the work horses ahead, returning for his saddle horse and the cow! This, to be sure, was a slow process, but it was an improvement over spending the night going around in a circle.

Wallie tied the cow's rope to the stirrup and both animals stood as if they were nailed to the spot while he ran after the work horses, who had wandered in another direction. His boots, he noted, were not adapted to walking as they pinched in the toes and instep. He could not stop for such a small matter at this critical moment, however, so he continued to run until he overtook the horses and started them homeward.

Turning to look at the cow and his saddle horse, he saw them walking briskly, side by side, like soulmates who understood each other perfectly, in the opposite direction from which he wanted them to go. He left the horses and ran after the cow, shouting:

“Whoa—can't you?”

He reasoned swiftly that the Jersey was the nucleus of a herd which would one day run up into the thousands, and he must get her at all hazards.

“Whoa! Bossy—wait for me!” he pleaded as at top speed he went after her. “Good bossy! Good bossy!”

At the sound of his voice the horse stopped, turned its head, and looked at him. The cow stopped also.

Intensely relieved, Wallie dropped to a walk, congratulating himself that the livery horse chanced to be so well trained and obedient. As he approached, the cow stepped forward that she might look under the horse's neck and watch her pursuer. Both animals stood like statues, regarding him intently. When within fifty feet Wallie said in a conciliatory tone, to show them that he stood ready to forgive them in spite of the inconvenience to which they had put him:

“Nice horsey! Good bossy!”

Quite as if it were a signal, “Nice horsey and good bossy” started at a trot which quickly left Wallie far behind them.

Wallie ran until he felt that his overtaxed lungs were bursting. His boots were killing him, his shin bones ached, and his feet at every step sank to the ankles in the loose sand. He pursued until he was bent double with the effort and his legs grew numb as if a hypodermic of cocaine had turned them leaden. The perspiration streamed from under his stylish derby.

When his legs would carry him not one step farther, he stopped and looked after the cow and horse—who were still doing perfect teamwork, trotting side by side as evenly as if they had been harnessed together. They stopped instantly when he stopped, and, as before, the horse turned its head to look back at him while the cow peered under its neck at him.

Hope revived again when they showed no disposition to move, and after he had panted a while, Wallie thought that by feigning indifference and concealing his real purpose he might approach them. To this end, he whistled with so much breath as his chase had left him, tossed pebbles inconsequently, and sauntered toward the pair as if he had all the day before him.

The subterfuge seemed to be succeeding, and he was once more within fifty feet of them when they whirled about simultaneously and started at the same lively trot, leaving Wallie far behind them.

Exhausted, Wallie stopped at last because he had to. Immediately the horse and cow stopped also. While he gasped, a fresh maneuver occurred to Wallie. Perhaps if he made a circle, gradually getting closer, by a quick dash he could catch the bridle reins.

As he circled, the gaze of the horse and cow followed him with the keenest interest. Finally he was close enough to see the placid look of benevolence with which his cow was regarding him and success seemed about to reward his efforts. The horse, too, had half closed its eyes by the time he was ready for his coup, as if it had lost all interest in eluding him.

“Nice horsey! Good bossy!” Wallie murmured reassuringly.

For the third time he was within fifty feet of them and, while he was debating as to whether to make his dash or try to get a little closer, the pair, seeming to recognize fifty as the danger zone, threw up their heads and tails and went off at a gallop.

Grinding his teeth in a way that could not but have been detrimental to the enamel, Wallie stood looking after them. A profane word never had passed his lips since he had had his mouth washed out with castile soap for saying “devil.” But now with the emphasis of a man who had cursed from his cradle, he yelled after the fleeing fiends incarnate:

“Go to hell—damn you!”

Instantly shocked and ashamed of himself, Wallie instinctively looked skyward, half expecting to see an outraged Jehovah ready to heave a thunderbolt down on him, though he felt that the Almighty in justice should recognize the provocation, and forgive him.

Weary, with blistered heels and drooping shoulders, Wallie plodded after them while time and again they repeated the performance until it would have worn down a blood-hound to have followed the tracks made by Wallie and the renegades. The sun set and the colors faded, yet Wallie with a dogged tenacity he had not known was in him trudged back and forth, around and around, in pursuit of the runaways, buoyed up chiefly by the hope that if he could catch them he might soon be wealthy enough to afford to kill them.

It was nearly dusk, and a night in the open seemed before him when the pair stopped and commenced feeding toward him. Whether they had become hungry or the sport had palled on them were questions Wallie could not answer. It was enough that they waited like two lambs for him to walk up and catch them, He was so tired that when he got himself in the saddle, with the cow ambling along meekly at his stirrup, that he found himself feeling grateful to them instead of vindictive. The locoed horses he decided to leave until morning.

By the time he had reached his homestead and fallen out of the saddle, he had forgotten that he had sworn to tie them up and “whale” them. On the contrary, he was wondering if milking were a difficult process and if he could accomplish it, for he could not find it in his heart to let a dumb brute suffer. He remembered hearing that cows should be milked regularly, and while his Jersey had goaded him to blasphemy he knew that he would not be able to sleep if she was in pain through his negligence.

Picketing the horse as Pinkey had taught him, he put the cow on a rope also. Then he set about the performance which had looked so simple when he had seen others engage in it.

Among his accouterments was a flash light, and with this and a lard can Wallie stood for a moment speculating as to whether the cow had any preference as to the side she was milked on. He could not see that it would make any material difference, so he sat down on his heel on the side nearest and turned his flash light on the spot where he wished to operate. Placing his lard can on the ground where he could throw a stream into it conveniently, he used his free hand for that purpose.

To his surprise, nothing happened—except that the cow stopped chewing her cud and looked at him inquiringly. He persisted, but uselessly. Was anything wrong with his system, he wondered? He thought so, since he was milking exactly as he had seen the hired man milk on a farm where he had once spent a month in his childhood.

He varied his method, making gentle experiments, but at the end of ten minutes the lard can was still empty and the cow was growing restless. For that he could not blame her. His hand ached and his foot seemed about to break off at the ankle from sitting on it. It occurred to him that perhaps there was some trick about it—perhaps it did make a difference which side a cow was milked on. Wallie walked around and turned the spotlight on the other side of his Jersey.

The outlook, he fancied, seemed more promising. He sat down on his heel and started in energetically.

It did make a difference which side one milked on—there was no doubt about it. The instant he touched her she lifted her foot and with an aim which was not only deadly and unerring, but remarkable, considering that she could not see her target, planted it in the pit of Wallie's stomach with such force that the muffled thud of it sounded like some one beating a carpet. As he lay on his back on a clump of cactus he was sure that he was bleeding internally and probably dying. Wallie finally got to his feet painfully and, with both hands on his stomach, looked at the cow, who was again chewing tranquilly. There was murder in Wallie's eyes.

“Damn you! I could cut your heart out!”

Then he crept up the path to his tent and dropped down on his pneumatic mattress, doubting if he ever would rise from it. As he lay there supperless, with his clothes on, every muscle in his body aching, to say nothing of the sensation in his stomach, it seemed incredible that he could be the same person who had started off so blithely in the morning.

The series of misfortunes which had befallen him overwhelmed him. He had purchased a cow which not only gave no milk but had a vicious disposition. He had paid two prices for a pair of locoed horses that did their pulling backward. He had made himself a laughingstock to the entire country and seemed destined to play the clown somehow whenever Helene Spenceley was in the vicinity. His ears grew red to the rims as he thought of it.

But she had resented Canby's dishonesty for him—that was something; and Wallie was in a mood to be grateful for anything.

The cow grunted as she lay down to her slumbers. Wallie ground his teeth as he heard her. A coyote yapped on a ridge forornly, and the horse on picket coughed and snorted while Wallie, staring at the stars through the entrance, massaged his injury, and ruminated.

Suddenly he sat up on his patent air mattress and shook his fist at the universe.

“Canby nor nobody else shall down me! I'm going to make good somehow, or fertilize Wyoming as old Appel told me. I'll show 'em!”

CHAPTER X.

Merry Christmas.

Wallie shivered in his sleep and pulled the soogans higher. The act exposed his feet instead of his shoulders, so it did not add to his comfort. He felt sleepily for the flour sack which he wore on his head as protection against the dust that blew in through the crack in the logs, and his fingers sank into a small snow bank that had accumulated on his pillow.

The chill of it completely awakened him. He found that there was frost on the end of his nose and he was in a miniature blizzard as far as his shoulders. The wind was howling around the corners and driving the first snow of the season through the many large cracks in his log residence.

The day was Christmas and there was no reason to believe that it would be a merry one. Wallie lay for a time considering the prospect and comparing it with other Christmases. He had a kettle of boiled beans, cold soda biscuit, coffee, and a prairie dog which he intended cooking as an experiment, for his Christmas dinner.

Growing more and more frugal as his bank account shrank with alarming rapidity, Wallie reasoned that if he could eat prairie dog it would serve a double purpose. While ridding his land of the pests it would save him much in such high-priced commodities as ham and bacon. He reasoned that since prairie dogs subsisted mainly upon roots, they were of cleanly habits and quite as apt to be nourishing and appetizing, if properly cooked, as rabbit.

Having the courage of his convictions, Wallie skinned and dressed two prairie dogs he had caught out of their holes one sunshiny morning, and meant to eat them for his Christmas dinner, if if was humanly possible.

He had purchased an expensive cookbook, but as his larder seldom contained any of the ingredients it called for, he considered the price of it wasted. He had found that the recipes imparted by Tex McGonnigle, who had built his ten-by-twelve log cabin for him, were far more practical. Under his tuition Wallie had learned to make “sweat pads,” “dough gods,” “mulligan,” and other dishes with names deemed unsuitable for publication.

After considering his dinner menu for a time, Wallie drew his knees to his chin, which enabled him to get his entire body under the soogan, and contrasted his present surroundings with those of the previous Christmas. In the spacious Florida hotel last year, he had only to touch a button to bring a uniformed menial who served him coffee and lighted a grate fire for him, while the furnishings of his room and bath were quite as luxurious as those of the Colonial.

Now, as the light strengthened, Wallie could see his third-handed stove purchased from the secondhand man, Tucker, standing in the corner with its list to starboard. The wind blowing through the baling wire which anchored the stovepipe to the wall sounded like an æolian harp played by a maniac. His patent camp chair had long since given way beneath him, and when he had found at the Prouty Emporium two starch boxes of the right height, he had been as elated when they were given to him as if he had been the recipient of a valuable present. They now served as chairs on either side of his plank table.

His pneumatic mattress collapsed from punctures and Wallie's bones were uncomfortably close to the boards in the bottom of the bunk McGonnigle had built against one end of the cabin. His pillow was a flour sack filled with straw and of a doubtful color, as was also the hand towel hanging on a nail beside a shocking washbasin.

There was a dirt roof on the cabin, from which clods of earth fell rather frequently and bounced on Wallie's head or dropped in the food, or on his bed to startle him when sleeping. The floor contained knot holes through which the field mice and chipmunks came up to share his provisions, and the door, being a trifle larger than the frame, could not be closed entirely.

When Wallie had called McGonnigle's attention to the fact that he could stand in the middle of his cabin and view the scenery through the cracks in any direction, McGonnigle had assured him that “fresh air never hurt nobody,” and while he cheerfully admitted that he was not a carpenter, declared that he had made allowances for this fact in his charges. Though Wallie could not notice it when he paid them, he said nothing, for by now he was accustomed to having everything cost, more than he had anticipated, however liberal he might be in his estimate.

Boise Bill rode by occasionally and inquired humorously if he thought he would “winter.” To which Wallie always replied that he intended to, though there were moments: of depression when he doubted it.

It was upon Wallie's inability to “winter” that Canby was counting. He had hung on longer than Canby had thought he would, but the cattleman felt fairly sure that the first big snowstorm would see the last of Wallie. The hardships and loneliness would “get” him as it did most tenderfeet, Canby reasoned, and some morning he would saddle up in disgust, leaving another homestead open to entry. Canby had no personal feeling against Wallie and, after meeting him, decided he would merely let him become starved out, and Wallie's bank balance indicated that Canby was in a fair way to see this happen.

Several happenings had made Wallie suspect something of Canby's purpose, and the same latent quality which had made Wallie trudge doggedly after his cow and horse until he had worn out their perversity, always made him tell himself grimly that he was going to stick until he had his crop in and harvested, if he laid down, a skeleton, and died beside one of his own haystacks.

Mostly, however, he was so busy with his cooking, feeding his live stock, getting wood and water, to say nothing of piling rocks and grubbing sagebrush, that he had no time to brood over Canby and the wrongs he had done him. He had learned from McGonnigle that his locoed horses would grow worse instead of better and eventually would have to be shot, and that person had imparted the discouraging information also that not only could he expect no milk from his cow until her calf arrived in January, but Jerseys were not a breed commonly selected for beef cattle.

Wallie had thought that his aunt would surely relent to the extent of writing him a Christmas letter but, yesterday, after riding eight miles to look in the bluing box nailed to a post by the roadside, he had found that it contained only a circular urging him to raise mushrooms in his cellar. Helene Spenceley, too, might have sent him a Christmas card or something. He had seen her only twice since the sale, and each time she had whizzed past him in Canby's machine on the way to Prouty.

Altogether Wallie felt very lonely and forlorn and forgotten this Christmas morning as he lay in a knot under the soogan, listening to the wind twanging the stovepipe wire and contemplating his present and future.

He had discovered that by craning his neck slightly when in a certain position he could look through a crack and see the notch in the mountain below, which was the Spenceley ranch, according to Pinkey. He was prompted to do so now, but an eyeful of snow discouraged his observation, so he decided that he would get up, feed his animals, and, after breakfast, wash his shirt and a few towels by way of recreation.

The cabin was not only as cold as it looked but colder, and as Wallie hopped over the floor barefooted and shivering, he reflected that very likely his potatoes and onions were frozen and wished he had taken them to bed with him. They were, unmistakably, for they rattled like glass balls when he picked up several onions and examined them with a pained expression.

Wallie was still wearing much of the wardrobe he had brought with him, and when dressed to go outside he was warm but unique in a green velour hat, his riding breeches, brilliant golf stockings that were all but feetless thrust in arctics, a blue flannel shirt from the emporium in Prouty, and a long, tight-fitting tan coat which had been very smart, indeed, at the time he purchased it.

The snow had stopped falling by the time he had done his chores and breakfasted. The only benefit the storm had brought him was that it did away with the necessity of carrying water for his washing. He had acquired the agility of a cliff dweller from scaling the embankment by means of the “toe holts” yet, at that, it was no easy matter to transport a bucket of water without spilling it.

While the snow water was melting, Wallie considered the manner in which he should prepare the prairie dog. He presumed that it was too much to expect that the cook-book would have anything to say on the subject, but it surely would recognize rabbit, and a recipe suitable for one would do for the other.

Wallie got out his cookbook and turned eagerly to the index, looking for “rabbit,” as the nearest likely thing to prairie dog. There was no mention of rabbit. A thought struck him—rabbit was hare and hare was rabbit, wasn't it? If so, the cookbook would not admit it, for there was no such word under the H's. He read on aloud disgustedly:

“Caviar toast, garnished. Crab, scalloped, in shell. Aspic in jelly. Fondu of cheese. Floating Island. Meringue glacé and whipped cream.”

The mere mention of the dishes made his mouth water, while his anger against the dame who had compiled it mounted higher. For half a cent he would write and inquire of the culinary oracle why she had ignored hare and rabbit. Continuing to scan the index, his eye caught a word which held possibilities. Game! If rabbit was not game, what was it?

Ah! Wallie looked at a picture of a rabbit lying on a platter, with its legs in the air and artistically decorated with parsley, until he felt more hungry than ever. Then he read aloud with gusto:

“Barbecued rabbit. Roast rabbit. Casserole of rabbit. Smothered rabbit. Stewed rabbit.”

Roast rabbit seemed to make the strongest appeal to him. He read the recipe aloud twice that he might the better comprehend it:

“Dress and wash the wily coureur de bois, but leave the heads on in cleaning them. Stuff the bodies with a forcemeat of fat, salt pork, minced onions, and fine bread crumbs well seasoned with salt and pepper. Sew them up with fine thread and lay upon thin slices of pork, covering the grating of the roaster. Lay other slices of pork over them, pour over all a cupful of stock and roast one hour. Remove the pork, then wash with butter and dredge with flour and brown. Drain off the gravy, lay the bits of bacon about the rabbit in the dish: thicken the gravy with browned flour. Boil up, add a tablespoonful of tomato catsup and a glass of claret; then take from the fire.”

Wallie reflected as he sat with his feet on the stove hearth overflowing with ashes, that when it came to the “forcemeat” he was “there with the crumbs,” since he had an accumulation of ancient biscuit too hard to eat. Also, he had salt pork and onions. The butter, tomato catsup, stock, claret, he must dispense with. After all, the prairie dogs were the main thing and he had them.

He congratulated himself that he had decided to leave on the heads when skinning them. The recipe so enthused him that he de cided to prepare them before starting in with his washing.

Obviously the first thing to do was to thaw the onions, so he put them in the oven, after which he went to a box in the corner and selected a few biscuits. Crumbs were crumbs, as he viewed it, and biscuit crumbs were quite as good as bread crumbs for his purpose.

There were certain marks on these biscuit that were made unmistakably by the teeth of mice and chipmunks, but these traces he removed painstakingly. As he reduced the biscuit to crumbs with a hammer, he recalled that he had been awakened several times by the sound of these pestiferous animals frisking in the box in the corner. He did not allow his mind to dwell upon this, however, lest it prejudice him when it came to the eating of the “forcemeat.”

Onions, he found, were not improved by freezing. Those he removed from the oven were distinctly pulpy, but since they smelled like onion and tasted like it, he mushed them in with the biscuit crumbs, and seasoned. Then he crammed the prairie dogs with the mixture and looked for a thread among his sewing articles. Since he could find nothing but black linen, Wallie threaded a darning needle and did a fancy “feather” stitch down the middle of each of them.

This accomplished, he stood off and viewed his handiwork with eminent pride and satisfaction, though it occurred to him that, owing to his generous use of “forcemeat,” they had a bloated appearance as if they had died of strychnine poisoning. The heads, too, were decidedly ratlike, and as the long, sharp teeth of the pair of them grinned up at Wallie he covered them hastily and set about his washing.

He had come to begrudge every stick of firewood, and it took an incredible amount to heat wash water. A man could very well fill his time if he did nothing but collect wood and carry water. As he set his tub and washboard on a box and rubbed vigorously on his undergarments, he smiled to himself and wondered what his friends of the Colonial would say if they could see him at the moment. He was desperately lonely. He wished some one would come along to talk to.

He was so far from the road that there were no passers-by, and no one wanted to see him anyhow, but his loneliness became so great, as he dwelt upon it, that on the remote chance that he might see some one, even in the distance, he stopped washing and walked to the window, where with his elbow he rubbed a spot clear of frost.

As he squinted out, he suddenly pressed his eye harder against the window. Did he see a speck that moved over the white, trackless world he gazed upon, or did he imagine it? He enlarged the lookout hole and strained his eyes until they watered. Surely it moved—surely. It would be too disappointing for words if it were only a delusion.

It did! It did! Some one was coming toward the cabin. Wallie shook with excitement at the prospect of a visitor. Whoever it might be, Wallie would make him stay for dinner if he had to pay him by the hour for his company. To-day, even Boise Bill would be welcome.

Wallie shoved his Christmas dinner in the oven and slammed the door upon it, stoked the fire lavishly, then fell upon the wash-board and rubbed furiously that he might be done the sooner. At intervals he dashed to the window, half afraid to look lest the rider had changed his mind and gone in another direction. But he kept coming, and there was something in the way he sat his horse which made him think it was Pinkey.

And Pinkey it was, brilliant as a rainbow in orange chaps, red flannel shirt, and a buckskin waistcoat. His coat tied behind the cantle suggested that he either had become overheated or at only twelve below had not yet felt the need of it. His horse was snorting steam like a locomotive, and icicles of frozen breath were pendent from its nostrils.

Wallie stood in the door, suds to the elbow and his hands steaming, waiting to receive him. His voice trembled:

“I never was so glad to see anybody in my life, Pinkey.”

“This is onct I know you ain't lyin'. Got anything to eat? I'm starvin'. I been comin' sence daylight.”

“I got something special,” Wallie replied mysteriously. “Tie your horse to the haystack. I'll hurry things up a little.”

Pinkey returned shortly and sniffed as he entered:

“It smells good, anyhow. There's something homelike about onions. What you cookin'?”

“It's a secret, but you'll like 'em. I made 'em out of the cookbook.”

Pinkey threw his coat on the table, and the thud sounded as if it had a brick rolled in it.

“Here's something Helene sent—she made it—it's angel food or somethin', I reckon.”

“Now, wasn't that good of her!” Wallie exclaimed gratefully.

“I can't tell till I taste it. I wouldn't call her much of a cook generally.” He prodded the cake as he unrolled it and commented:

“Gosh, it's hard! I turned my thumb nail back on it.”

“It's frozen—that's what's the matter,” Wallie defended promptly.

“I think it's a bum cake,” declared Pinkey callously.

“I think you don't know what you're talking about until you try it.”

Pinkey looked at him thoughtfully and changed the subject.

“I see you're playin' a tune on the wash-board.”

Wallie replied stiffly:

“Yes, I'm doing a little laundry.” Pinkey's criticism of the cake still rankled.

“You aint washin' that blue shirt a'ready?” Pinkey demanded incredulously. “You only bought it Thanksgivin'.”

“The front of it bent like rubber glass, and I couldn't stand it any longer.” He added reminiscently: “There was a time when I wore a fresh shirt daily.”

“I wouldn't think changin' as often as that would be healthy.”

The clothes in the dish pan on the stove boiled over, and as Wallie jumped for the broom handle to poke them under, Pinkey added:

“Are you b'ilin' your flannens?”

“Certainly.”

“A ten-year-ol' boy can't git in that suit of underwear onct you're done cookin' it,” Pinkey explained.

Wallie looked his consternation.

“I'll know better next time,” he said humbly.

Pinkey consulted his watch and hinted:

“Don't you want me to make the bread?”

“No, I have some biscuit to warm over. We'll boil potatoes, thaw the cake out, open some pineapple, and with what I have in the oven we will have a dinner that's nothing short of a banquet.”

“Great! I'm so hungry I could eat with a Digger Injun.”

Wallie opened the oven door.

“They're browning beautifully!” he reported.

“Chickens?”

Wallie shook his head:

“I'm not telling you until you've passed upon them.”

“If you've got enough of whatever it is—that's all that's worryin' me,” declared Pinkey hungrily. “You'd ought to build you a root cellar next winter—if you're livin',” he remarked, as the potatoes rattled when Wallie dropped them in the kettle.

“Do you suppose I could grow potatoes? Is it too dry?”

“This is a great country for potatoes. There's somethin' in the soil that gits in the potatoes' eyes and makes 'em water so they irrigate themselves.”

“I want to make a good many improvements here before next winter,” announced Wallie hopefully. “I wish you could come over for a while and help me.”

“That mightn't be a bad idea,” said Pinkey thoughtfully. “Sence the country went dry I don't much care whether I draw wages or not. Nothin' to spend money for, so what's the use of workin'? If I was over here I might add a few feet to my rope and git me a good little start off Canby.”

“Do you see much of him?” Wallie asked indifferently.

“Too much,” said Pinkey shortly.

Wallie dropped the pan he was turning in the oven.

“They're browning beautifully,” he exclaimed hastily.

“You said that before. Ain't it gittin' time to work on 'em?”

“Remove your feet and I'll set the table.”

“Can't you spread a paper fer a table-cloth? I always git splinters in my elbows when I eat off rough lumber.”

Wallie laughed good-humoredly as he obliged him.

“That's shore a great smell comin' from the oven! Let's eat, feller.”

“Sit down while I put things on the table. I trust everything is going to be to your liking,” Wallie declared cordially as he drew the prairie dogs from the oven and laid them on an agate-ware platter.

Busy with a potato, Pinkey did not see them until they were before him, Then he stopped and stared hard as they lay on their backs, grining up at him with the “forcemeat” oozing through the stitching.

“What are they?” His emphasis was not flattering.

“I shan't tell you yet,” declared Wallie. Pinkey continued to eye them suspiciously.

Wallie looked offended.

“I intend to eat some myself,” he replied with dignity.

“Are they some kind of a varmint?”

“Varmint?”

“Pack rat or weasel?”

“Scarcely!”

“I was jest cur'ous. Is that stuffin' or in'ards coming through the sewin' down the front of 'em?”

“Forcemeat. I made it according to a recipe.”

“Indeed?” Politely. “Don't go shy yourself jest because I'm here,” he protested as Wallie attempted to cut one in two with the butcher knife. “I ain't feelin' so hungry—somethin' has took my appetite.”

As the table swayed under Wallie's efforts to carve a prairie dog, he suggested: “Perhaps if you took hold of one leg——”

“Ye-ah,” said Pinkey, “and you take holt of the other and put your foot on my chest so you kin git a purchase, then we'll both pull.”

“If I could only find a joint——”

“Worry one of them legs off and we'll see how we like it before you play yourself out on it.”

Wallie acted upon the suggestion and presented the severed member. “Try it,” he urged persuasively.

Pinkey sunk his grinders into the leg and laid back on it.

“Does it seem tough?” Wallie asked, watching him anxiously.

“Tough! I'm scairt it's goin' to snap back and knock me over. Wait till I git a fresh holt on it.”

“Do you get the flavor at all?”

“I can't pull enough off to taste it,” Pinkey replied.

“Try the dressing and tell me what you think of it.” Wallie scooped out a generous spoonful and placed it on his plate, waiting confidently for the verdict. Pinkey conveyed his knife to his mouth while Wallie stood regarding him with an expression of pleased expectancy as he tasted.

A startled look was succeeded by one that was unmistakably horror. Pinkey knocked over the box upon which he was sitting as he jumped from the table and tore the kitchen door open.

“Tell you what I think of it!” he declared, returning. “I aint got words—they ain't none in the dictionary. My Gawd! What is it made of?”

“Just biscuit crumbs and onions,” said Wallie, coloring.

Pinkey made a hideous grimace.

“Gimme a drink of water! Gimme a chew of tobacto! Gimme anything to take the taste of mouse out'n my mouth. Wallie”—solemnly—“men have died fer less'n that in this country!”

“I thought I was very particular and cut off everything that looked suspicious,” said Wallie meekly. “I must have missed something.”

“You shore did! And,” Pinkey demanded, “what might them horrors be on the platter? Them teeth are mighty familiar.”

“Prairie dog—I was experimenting to see if they were edible.”

“Leave me out in the air again!” Pinkey groaned as he swallowed a drink of water: “And I passed up a turkey dinner to come and eat with you!”

“Shan't I cook you some bacon?” asked Wallie contritely.

“I doubt if I ever feel like eatin' ag'in, but if the cake's thawed out I'll try a chunk of it to take my mind off that stuffin'.”

Wallie opened the can of pineapple he had been treasuring and Pinkey helped himself freely to the Christmas cake.

“They must be about four meals in one of them slices, the way it feels inside of me,” the latter commented, nibbling delicately on a ring of pineapple he held in his fingers.

“It's fruit cake, and rich; you're not supposed to eat so much of it,” Wallie said sharply.

Pinkey raised his eyebrows and regarded Wallie attentively as he continued to nibble.

“Looks like you're turrible touchy about her cookin', and swelled up over gittin' a Christmas present,” he remarked finally. “You needn't be, because she made eight other cement bricks jest like this one and sent 'em around to fellers she's sorry for.”

“Oh, did she!” Wallie ejaculated, crestfallen.

“Yes, indeed,” Pinkey went on complacently, feeling a glow of satisfaction at Wallie's lengthened countenance. “She does it every Christmas. She's kind to the pore and sufferin', but it don't mean nothin' more than a dollar she'd drop in a hat somebody was passin'.”

Noting the deep gloom which immediately, settled upon Wallie, Pinkey could think of the prairie dogs with more equanimity.

CHAPTER XI.

The Water Witch.

In former days, Wallie had wished intermittently for a yacht, his own stables, and such luxuries, but now he wanted a well, with far greater intensity than he had desired those extravagances.

The all-important question had been as to whether he could at present afford it, with his money vanishing like a belated snow bank. Then, while he had been debating, Rufus Reed appeared at such a timely moment that it had seemed providential.

Mr. Reed, lately arrived from Illinois, was now sitting with his feet on the stove hearth and so close to the coals that the cabin was strong with the odor of frying rubber, and declaring modestly:

“I may say, without braggin', that I have made an enormous success since I gave up my flour and feed store and took to well diggin' as a perfession. By accident I discovered that I was peculiarly gifted.”

“In what way, may I ask?” Wallie inquired politely.

Mr. Reed's tone became impressive:

“I am—a water witch.”

Wallie looked puzzled.

“Some call it magic, but the fact is, I am able to locate water with a forked willer, and you can call it anything you want to.”

Wallie regarded the worker of miracles with fresh attention. His belief in his own powers was evidently so sincere that even a skeptic could not fail to be impressed by him.

He continued:

“With my divinin' rod I have flew in the faces of the biggest geologists in the country and found water where they said there wasn't any.”

“Will the divining rod tell you how far you must dig for it?”

“Pretty close to it. I count a foot to every bob of the willer.”

“In a State like Illinois where there is a great deal of moisture I presume it would be possible to get water anywhere if one went deep enough, but in Wyoming, frankly, I should not like to rely on the divining rod in Wyoming, Mr. Reed.”

Mr. Reed looked somewhat offended.

“I'll tell you what I'll do! I'll make you a sportin' proposition, I'll test the ground with the willer and if it says we'll get water at a certain depth and we don't strike it, I'll dig till we do, for nothin', if we have to go till we hear the Chinamen gibber. That's fair, ain't it?”

Wallie could not gainsay it.

“I got a willer on my saddle, and it won't cost nothin' for a demonstration. Say the word,” persuasively, “and you've good as got a fine, flowing well of water.”

It would do no harm to let the water witch make his test, Wallie decided, so he followed sheepishly in the wake of Rufus and his willow as he walked over the greater part of the one hundred and sixty acres.

“'Tain't nowise plentiful,” the latter admitted, as with each hand gripping a prong of the willow he kept his eyes fixed upon it. “But if it's here I'm bound to find it, so don't get discouraged.”

At the top of a draw some hundred and fifty yards from the cabin, Rufus suddenly halted.

“I felt somethin',” he said hopefully.

“Where?” Wallie asked, interested.

“In my arm—like pins and needles—it's a symptom. She's goin' to bob!” Excitedly. “You watch and count along of me.”

The willow bobbed unmistakably.

“Sixty-eight!” They finished together.

Impressed in spite of himself, Wallie endeavored to be conservative.

“Could it have been your subconscious mind?” he asked doubtfully.

“I ain't any. Rufus Reed is right out in the open. I'll stake my reputation there's plenty of water right here, if you'll go after it.”

“It's rather far from the house for convenience,” he objected.

“Water in Wyoming is like whisky, you have to take it where you can get it and not be perticular.”

It was a temptation, and the cost at three dollars a foot was not excessive. Wallie pondered it and said finally:

“You will agree in writing to dig without remuneration until you get water if you do not strike it at sixty-eight feet?”

“An iron-clad contract will suit yours truly,” Mr. Reed declared emphatically. He added: “I'll bring two men to work the h'ist and empty the bucket. Of course you'd aim to board us?”

“Why, yes, I can,” Wallie said a little uncertainly.

He had figured that with strict economy he had provisions enough to last him well toward summer. Three men eating three meals daily might make some difference in his calculations, but nothing serious probably. So the contract was drawn up and signed and Rufus departed, eminently satisfied, as was Wallie, who was so eager to see his well start that he could hardly wait until the following Monday.

There was something permanent looking about a well, and he chuckled as he speculated as to what Canby would say when he heard of it, and he wished with all his heart that he might be around when Helene Spenceley learned that he was sinking a well on his place for household and stock purposes.

He had taken advantage of the opportunity which the gift of the cake presented, to send her a note of thanks and appreciation. In reply he had received an invitation which had stung him worse than if she had written that she never wanted to see him across the threshold. His eyes gleamed every time he read it, which was so often that it was worn through the creases from being folded and unfolded:

Every word had a nettle in it, a taunt that made him tingle. He was tempted to send her word, on a postal, anonymously, of the well he was digging if he had not feared she would suspect him. It seemed so long to wait for Pinkey to convey the tidings.

Rufus arrived on Monday morning and the “crew” to which he had referred proved to be members of his own family—John and Will—whales as to size and lubberly.

It came to Wallie's mind that if they did not move any faster when they worked than when they were at leisure, the well digging would be a long process, and his heart sank when he saw them feeding their horses so liberally from the hay which had cost twenty dollars a ton, delivered.

The first intimation Wallie had of what he had let himself in for was when Rufus asked in a confidential tone, as if he were imparting something for Wallie's ear only:

“I wonder if we could get a bite to eat before we start in? We eat so early this morning that I don't feel as if I had had anything.”

Wallie had a pan of biscuit which he had intended for dinner, but he concealed his reluctance and managed to say with a show of hospitality:

“Come right in; I'll get you something.”

“First-rate!” declared Mr. Reed with disheartening enthusiasm as Wallie placed the biscuit, butter, and molasses before him and his helpers.

Wallie hoped never again to see food—his, at least—disappear with such rapidity and in such quantities. Rufus added to Wallie's feeling of apprehension by declaring gayly as he polished his mouth on the bandanna which he drew from his hip pocket with a flourish:

“Us Reeds are all hearty eaters. We can eat a sheep at a settin', when we're all together.”

Biscuit making was Wallie's special antipathy, and he now solaced himself with the thought that since they had eaten so many, they would eat less for dinner and he would have plenty of the fresh ones left for supper. But disappointment was again his portion. The manner in which they vanished was nothing less than appalling. In addition to which, he fried ham twice for them when they hinted that they were still hungry after devouring everything before them.

Any hope that he might have cherished that, once they were well filled up, their appetites would diminish, was dissipated by their performance at supper which surpassed that of dinner. As they all sprawled on his bunk in a torpor, while he washed their dishes, he felt not only consternation but a dislike for the Reed family growing within him. He laid awake a long time, that night, calculating how long his provisions would last at such a rate of depletion if he continued to cater to the bottomless caverns through courtesy called stomachs?

It did not sound so much of a “sporting proposition” as when Rufus had made his proposal, and Wallie sighed in the darkness as he thought that there seemed a million ways of making mistakes in Wyoming, and this already had the earmarks of being another of them.

If they found water at the depth indicated by the divining rod, it might not so much matter, but there was the other contingency confronting him—feeding the Reeds indefinitely! There was nothing to do in the circumstances but await developments.

The developments, however, were not of an encouraging nature. In addition to a capacity for food which placed them among the world's marvels, they were of a slowness of movement Wallie never had seen equaled. The well deepened by inches rather than feet, while Wallie's suspicion gradually became a conviction, as he watched them, that they were prolonging the work purposely. It seemed to be in the nature of a vacation for them with just enough exercise to keep them in condition.

His antipathy had become aversion, and Wallie sometimes caught himself with his fork poised in mid-air, stopping to hate John, who munched and smacked beside him, or Will who gobbled at the end of the table, or Rufus shoveling opposite him. Again, as they came at a trot in response to his dinner call, he visualized himself braining them with the ax as they entered, and found pleasure in the picture. If hatred generated a poison in the system as asserted, Wallie had a notion that his bite would have been as fatal as a cobra's.

Yet as the hole deepened he could not help a certain feeling of pride in it. The sense of possession was a strong trait in him, and this was his well, and his homestead. He always felt the same pleasant glow of ownership when he looked at his cabin and his fence, even at his dry cow and his locoed horses. He made frequent pilgrimages to the well, and as he hung over the edge and called down, Rufus always replied to his inquiry:

“I don't see any indications yet, but I look for it to come with a gush when we do strike it.”

When they reached sixty-eight feet and there was still no sign of moisture, Wallie told Reed that he was willing to abrogate the contract.

“No, sir!” Rufus declared vigorously. “I've staked my reputation on this well, and I'm goin' to keep on diggin'.”

At seventy-two feet Wallie was desperate. The hole was still as dry as punk and boarding the Reed's was nothing less than ruinous. A solution of his problem came in the night with such force and suddenness that he rolled to and fro in his bunk, hugging himself in ecstasy. He longed for morning to put his idea into execution and, when it came, for the first time since their arrival, he was delighted to see the Reeds seating themselves at the table.

There were potatoes, bacon, and pancakes, with coffee, for breakfast. John dubiously eyed the transparent fluid in his cup which might as easily have been tea, and commented:

“You musta left out somethin'.”

Will made a wry face after filling it with half a pancake:

“Gosh! But you throwed in the sody. They ain't fit for a dog to eat. I can't go 'em.”

With the intention of taking the taste of soda out of his mouth he filled it with potato, and immediately afterward he and John jammed in the doorway as they tried to get through it simultaneously.

Wiping their streaming eyes and gulping water, they said accusingly: “There's a can of cayenne if there's a pinch in them pertaters!”

“And the bacon's burned to a cracklin',” observed Rufus.

“Perhaps you're getting tired of my cooking?” Wallie suggested artlessly.

“I'm tired now if this is a spec'min of what you aim to feed us,” John declared suspiciously.

“I'm holler to the toes and I can't work on an empty stummick,” said Will disgustedly.

Only Rufus went on eating as if it took more than a can of soda and a box of pepper to spoil his food for him, and he explained as they wondered at it:

“I ain't no taste sence I had scarlet fever so it don't bother me.”

“Ain't you goin' to git us somethin'?” John demanded finally, seeing Wallie made no move to cook fresh food for them.

“No,” Wallie answered bluntly, “there's nothing in the contract which specifies the manner in which I shall prepare your food for you or the amount of it. Dinner will be worse than breakfast if you want the truth from me.”

“I'm quittin'!” the two declared together.

“Now, look here, boys!” the old man expostulated. “We got to finish this job, and you know the reason.”

“Reason or no reason, I ain't starvin' myself to oblige nobody,” John declared vigorously, “and he's got the drop on us about the eatin'.”

“Then go—the two of you!” Reed cried angrily. “I'm goin' to stay—I ain't nothin' to complain of. Him and me,” he nodded at Wallie, “can dig that well without ye.”

Surly and without speaking, the boys took their departure.

“They got bad dispositions—they take after their mother,” Rufus remarked, looking after them. “With you to work the windlass and empty the bucket we'll make out without them till I pick up another crew somewhere.”

“I am willing to accept my loss and quit,” Wallie pleaded.

“Well, I ain't!” declared Rufus, unnecessarily bellicose. “A contract is a contract, and I got you in writin'.”

Wallie could not deny it and subsided meekly, putting a ham on to boil with a cabbage while Rufus smoked until he was ready to assist him.

“If they's anything I like it's a good mess of ham and cabbage,” he observed.

“I am glad to have found something to stimulate your appetite—it's worried me.”

Later, turning the windlass according to instructions, Wallie deposited Rufus in the bottom. Then at intervals he hoisted the bucket, which Rufus filled in leisurely fashion, and emptied it, performing the two men's work easily.

Wallie went occasionally to stoke the fire, and upon his return reported so favorably upon the ham and cabbage that Rufus took to consulting his watch rather frequently after ten-thirty.

“I'll quit at 'leven,” he informed Wallie, “and that'll give you plenty of time to make a batch of biscuit and get dinner.”

Wallie agreed with him that it was an excellent idea, and promptly at eleven pulled up the bucket of dirt which was to be the last one. When it did not come down immediately, Rufus called to him:

“Hi! I'm ready! Get a move on, for I'm starvin'.”

Only the echo of his own voice answered him. Slightly alarmed, he called louder:

“MacPherson! What's happened to ye?”

Still no answer. Distinctly nervous, Rufus shouted at the top of his lungs for Wallie and the bucket, breaking into a perspiration at the continued silence. Was he sick? Fainted? Dead? Many things that could occur came to Reed as he halloed futilely.

When one o'clock came he was hoarse from yelling and sick with fear at his predicament. His imagination painted gruesome pictures as he sweated. He saw himself weak and emaciated, dying slowly of starvation, collapsing, finally, to lie undiscovered for days, weeks maybe. His suffering would be horrible, for he had the intelligence to know that it was useless to struggle, that there was no hope for him unless some one came to his assistance. And, merciful heavens, how hungry he was at only an hour past his dinner time. What would his sensations be at an hour past his supper time or at one o'clock to-morrow? He made a sound like some one groaning in a rain barrel as he thought of the ham and cabbage boiling dry in the cabin.

It made the back of his neck ache to watch the opening of his prison and the patch of blue sky, from which he prayed vaguely, that a rope ladder might descend to rescue him. So he sat down finally with his back against the side of the well, his knees to his chin, and his head bowed, to await the inevitable.

When three o'clock came he could no longer doubt but that some accident had befallen Wallie. He had given up hope and endeavored to resign himself to the fate awaiting him. Remorse mingled with the pangs of hunger and the cold fear of dying which was upon him. If by some miracle he got out—if the Lord saw fit to save him—he would be a different man. The Almighty had his word for it. Still sitting with his back against the wall and his cramped legs extended in front of him, Rufus roiled his eyes in supplication to the circular blue space above him and registered this vow with all the fervor and sincerity of which he was capable.

He moved uneasily. He was vaguely conscious of a dampness. He felt mechanically of that section of his overalls upon which he was sitting. He sprang to his feet with an exclamation and looked at the spot he had occupied. Moisture! A seepage! Water! His eyes grew big with horror. Even as he looked with dilating pupils he could see the earth darken with the spreading moisture.

He had sunk too many wells not to know what it portended. Not only his days but his hours, perhaps, were numbered. If it was alkali, it would seep in slowly and prolong his agony; if it were not, it would come faster. He would die literally in a grave of his own digging.

As he leaned there, nauseated, he caught a sound, or thought so, which increased the sinking sensation, the feeling of collapse that overwhelmed him. He took off his hat and laid his ear against the wall to be sure of it. He had not been mistaken. His time on earth was shorter even than he had imagined. The sound he had heard was the rumble of a subterranean current that would soon break through, flowing faster and faster as the opening enlarged until it finally came with a gush.

Rufus got on his knees in an attitude of prayer and supplication. The cracked remnants of his stentorian voice he used to the utmost advantage. No Methodist exhorter ever prayed with more passionate fervor.

“Lord, it was wrong for me to take that one hundred and fifty dollars, but Canby tempted me. I needed the money or I don't know as I would have done it. If you'll jest get me out of this, Lord, all the rest of my life I'll do what I can for you! I'll go to church—I'll give to the heathen—I'll stop takin' your name in vain and say my prayers reg'lar!

“Oh, Lord! Once I stole a halter and I ask your forgiveness. And I left a neighbor's gate open on purpose so the stock got into his cornfield, but I ain't a bad man naturally, and this is the first real crookedness I ever done intentionally, Lord!” he pleaded, “hear my humble prayer and send somebody!”

At the top of the well, Wallie had his suspicions verified. So Canby had laid one more straw on the camel's back to break it! Leaning over the edge of the well, he called down cheerily:

“How you making it?”

“In mercy's name let me out of here, MacPherson!”

“You're all right where you are, Rufus,” Wallie answered. “When you're down there you are out of mischief.”

“I'm hungry—I'm starvin'——”

“I don't know when I've eaten such a ham—tender, a delicious flavor and just enough fat on it. I thought of you all through dinner, Rufus.”

“We've struck water—a big flow—I can hear it—it'll break through any minute!”

“That's fine! Splendid!”

“You don't understand!” Rufus cried “I'm liable to be drowned before you can h'ist me out of here.”

“Tell me about that deal between you and Canby,” Wallie suggested.

“I'll make a clean breast of it.”

“I don't want to pollute my well unless I have to, but that's the only way you'll get out of there,” Wallie told him grimly.

“Canby's out to break you, in one way and another. He thought there was no water over here and he paid me to talk you into diggin' for it. He seen me and my boys eat one day in the mess house and he said 'twould break the Bank of England to board us. So he wanted that clause in the contract, and after sixty-eight feet he paid us a hundred and fifty dollars bonus. I done wrong. Mr. MacPherson, and I freely admit it!”

“And you like my cooking, Rufus? You like your food highly seasoned with plenty of soda in the pancakes and dough gods?”

“Yes, Mr. MacPherson,” whined Rufus, “I never complained about your cookin', I've nothin' against you personal, and I'll knock off somethin' on the bill for bringin' in water if you'll jest let down that——” A screech finished the sentence. Then: “C-r-rr-ripes! She's busted through! She's comin' like a river!”

He jumped and clawed at the sides in his frenzy and Wallie could see that Rufus well might do so, for even as Wallie looked the water rushed in and rose to Rufus' ankles. It was indeed time for action, and Wallie himself felt relief when the windlass span and he heard the splash of the bucket in the bottom.

Rufus' shrieks urged haste as he began to wind laboriously, and with reason, for Rufus was heavy, and though Wallie put forth all his strength it was no easy task, single-handed. Rufus rose so slowly that the water gained rapidly. It became a race between Wallie and the subterranean stream that had been tapped, and he was panting and all but exhausted when Rufus rose to the surface. As he stepped from the bucket the water reached the top, poured over the edge, and rushed down the “draw” to Skull Creek.

Wallie looked with bulging eyes for a moment and, when he had recovered from his astonishment, he turned joyfully, his grudge forgotten, and shook Rufus' hand in mutual congratulation.

A moment later his enthusiasm was tempered somewhat by the discovery that he had brought to the surface the strongest flow of salt water in the country!

CHAPTER XII.

Wiped Out.

“It's shore wicked the way you curse, old-timer,” said Pinkey reprovingly, as Wallie came up from the corral carrying an empty milk bucket in one hand and testing the other for broken bones. “I could hear you talkin' to Rastus from whur I'm settin'.”

Wallie exhibited a row of bruised knuckles and replied fiercely:

“If ever I had an immortal soul, I've lost it since that calf came! Between his bunting on one side and me milking on the other, the cow kicked the pail over.”

“Quirl you a brownie and blow it through your hackamore and forgit it,” said Pinkey soothingly, as he handed him a book of cigarette papers, with a sack of tobacco and made room for him on the doorsill. “I ain't used to cow milk, anyhow; air tight is betber

Wallie took the offering but remained standing, rolling it dexterously as he looked off at his eighty acres of spring wheat showing emerald green in the light of a July sunset.

Pinkey eyed him critically—the tufts of hair which stood out like brushes through the cracks in what had once been a fine Panama, his ragged shirt, the faded overalls, the riding boots with heels so run over that he walked on the side of them.

Unconscious of the scrutiny, Wallie continued to gaze in a kind of holy ecstasy at his wheat field until Pinkey ejaculated:

“My! but you've changed horrible!”

“How—changed?” Wallie asked absently.

“You're so danged dirty! I should think you'd have to sand that shirt before you could hold it to git into it.”

“I hardly ever take it off,” said Wallie. “I've been so busy I haven't had time to think how I looked, but I hope now to have more leisure. Pinkey”—impressively—“I believe my troubles are about over.”

“Don't you think it!” replied Pinkey bluntly. “A dry farmer kin have six months of hard luck three times a year for four and five years, hand runnin'. In fact, they ain't no limit to the time, and the kind of things that kin happen to a dry farmer.”

“But what could happen now?” Wallie asked, startled.

“It's too clost to bedtime fer me to start in tellin' you,” said Pinkey dryly.

“You're too pessimistic, Pinkey. I've prepared the soil and seed according to the instructions in the farmers' bulletins from Washington, and, as a result, I've got the finest stand of wheat around here—even Boise Bill said so when he rode by yesterday.”

“Rave on!” Pinkey looked at him mockingly. “It's pitiful to hear you. You read them bulletins a while and you won't know nothin'. I seen a feller plant some corn his congressman sent him, and the ears was so hard the pigs used to stand and squeal in front of 'em. But, of course, I'm glad you're feelin' so lucky; I'm scairt of the feelin' myself, for it makes me take chances, and I always git a jolt for it.”

Wallie's face was sober as he confided:

“If anything went wrong, I'd be done for. I'm so near broke that I count my nickels like some old woman with her butter-and-egg money.”

“I guessed it,” said Pinkey calmly, “from the rabbit fur I see layin' around the dooryard.”

“Nearly everything has cost double what I thought it would, but if I get a good crop and the price of wheat holds up, I'll come out aflying.”

“If nothin' happens,” Pinkey supplemented,

“I want to show you one of those bulletins.”

“I've seen plenty of 'em. You can't stop 'em once you git 'em started. Them, and pamphlets tellin' us why we went to war, has killed off many a mail carrier that had to fight his way through blizzards, or be fined fer not deliverin' 'em on schedule. I ain't strong fer gover'mint literature.”

Wallie stepped inside the cabin and brought out a pamphlet with an illustration of twelve horses hitched to a combined harvester and thrasher, standing in a wheat field of boundless acreage.

“There,” he said proudly, “you see my ambition”

Pinkey regarded it unexcited.

“That's a real nice picture,” he said finally, “but I thought you aimed to go in for cattle?”

“I did. But I've soured on them since that calf came and I've been milking.”

Pinkey agreed heartily.

“I'd ruther 'swamp' fer a livin' than do low-down work like milkin'.”

“When I come in at night, dog tired and discouraged, I get out this picture and look at it and tell myself that some day I'll be driving twelve horses on a thrasher. A chap thinks and does curious things when he has nobody but himself for company.”

“That's me, too,” said Pinkey understandingly. “When I'm off alone, huntin' stock, I ride fer hours wonderin' if it's so that you kin make booze out of a raisin.”

“Let's walk out and look at the wheat,” Wallie suggested.

Pinkey complied obligingly, though farming was an industry in which he took no interest.

Wallie's pride in his wheat was inordinate. He never could get over a feeling of astonishment that the bright, green grain had come from seeds of his planting—that it was his—and he would reap the benefit. Nature was more wonderful than he had realized, and he never before had appreciated her. He always forgot the heartbreaking and backbreaking labor when he stood as now, surveying with glowing face the even, green carpet stretching out before him. In such moments he found his compensation for all he had gone through since he arrived in Wyoming, and he smiled pityingly as he thought of the people at the Colonial, rocking placidly on the veranda.

“Did you ever see anything prettier?” Wallie demanded, his eyes shining.

“It's all right,” Pinkey murmured absently,

“You're not looking,” Wallie said sharply.

“I was watchin' them cattle.”

“I don't see any.”

Pinkey pointed, but Wallie could see nothing.

“If they got cows on Mars, I'll bet I could read the bran's,” Pinkey boasted. “Can't you see them specks movin' off yonder?”

Wallie admitted he could not.

“It's cattle, and they act like somebody's drivin' 'em,” Pinkey declared positively. “Looks like it's early to be movin' 'em to the mountain.” His curiosity satisfied, he gave the wheat his attention. “It looks fine, Wallie,” he said with sincerity.

Wallie could not resist crowing:

“You didn't think I'd last, did you? Miss Spenceley didn't, either. She'll be disappointed very likely when she hears I've succeeded.”

“Don't cackle till you've laid your aig, Gentle Annie. When you've thrashed and sold your grain and got your money in the bank, then I'll help you. We'll git drunk, if I have to rob a drug store.”

“You're always putting a damper on me. It was you who advised me to go in for dry farming,” Wallie reminded him.

“I figgered that if you lived through a year of it,” Pinkey replied candidly, “then almost anything else would look like a snap to you.”

It was plain that in spite of his prospects Pinkey was not sanguine, but in this moment of his exultation, failure seemed impossible to Wallie.

In various small ways Canby had tried to break him and had not succeeded. Boise Bill had prophesied that he would not “winter”—yet here he was with every reason to believe that he would also “summer.” Wallie felt rather invincible as he reflected upon it, and the aurora borealis did not exceed in color the outlook his fancy painted that evening.

“It's eight-thirty,” Pinkey hinted. “When I set up till all hours I oversleep in the morning.”

Wallie came to earth reluctantly, and as he returned to the cabin he again permitted himself the luxury of pitying the folk of the Colonial who knew nothing of such rapturous moments in that stale, uneventful world, which was so remote and different from the present that it was beginning to seem like a dream to him.

They had been asleep for an hour, more possibly, when Pinkey nudged Wallie violently.

“What's that huffin', do you reckon?”

Wallie awoke with a start and listened.

“Huffing” was the right word. Lying next to the logs, some large animal was breathing so heavily in Wallie's ear that it sounded like a bellows. He looked through a crack and saw something that looked like a mastadon in the darkness, tugging at a sack he had used for chinking. It was not a horse and was too large for his Jersey. It flashed through his mind that it might be a roaming silver tip from the mountain.

Pinkey was out of the bunk at a bound and around the corner of the cabin, where his suspicions were instantly verified.

“Its a bull!” he shouted. “I thought it. Looks like a thousand head of cattle tramplin' down your wheat field!”

Wallie turned sick. He could not move for a moment. His air castles fell so hard he could almost hear them.

“Do you think they've been in long?” he asked weakly.

“Can't tell till daylight.” Pinkey was getting into his clothes hurriedly.

Wallie was now in the doorway, and he could make out innumerable dark shapes browsing contentedly in his grain field. “What'll we do?” he asked despairingly.

“Do?” replied Pinkey savagely, tugging at his boot straps. “I'll send one whur the dogs won't bite him with every ca'tridge. We'll run a thousand dollars' worth of taller off the rest of 'em. Git into your clothes, Gentle Annie, and well smoke 'em up proper.”

“I don't see how it could happen,” said Wallie, his voice trembling. “The fence was good, and——”

“If it had been twenty feet high 'twould 'a' been all the same,” Pinkey answered. “Them cattle was drove in.”

“You mean——” Wallie's mouth opened.

“Shore—Canby! It come to my mind last night when I seen that bunch movin'. Pretty coarse work I call it, but he thought you was alone and wouldn't ketch on to it.”

“He'll pay for this!” cried Wallie chokingly.

“You can't do nothin' with him but deal him misery. He's got too much money and pull fer you. Do you know what I think's gnawin' on him?”

“My taking up a homestead?”

“That, too, but mostly because Helene dressed him down for sellin' that locoed team to you. He's jealous.”

Even in his despair Wallie felt pleased that any one, especially Canby, should be jealous of him because of Helene Spenceley.

“He aims to marry her,” Pinkey added. “I wisht you could beat his time and win yerself a home somehow. I don't think you got any show, but if I was you I'd take another turn around my saddle horn and hang on. Whenever I kin”—kindly—“I'll speak a good word for you. Throw your saddle on your horse and step, young feller. I'm gone!”

The faint hope which Wallie had nursed that the damage might not be so great as he had feared vanished with daylight. Not only was the grain trampled so the field looked like a race course, but panel after panel of the fence was down where the quaking asp posts had snapped like lead pencils. As Pinkey and Wallie surveyed it in the early dawn, Wallie's voice had a catch in it when he said finally:

“I guess I'm done farming. They made a good job of it.”

“I'm no 'sharp,' but it looks to me like some of that wheat would straighten up, if it got a good wettin'.”

Wallie said grimly: “The only thing I forgot to buy when I was outfitting in Philadelphia was a rain-making apparatus.”

“On the level,” Pinkey declared earnestly, “I b'leeve we're goin' to have a shower—the clouds bankin' up over there in the northwest is what made me think of it.”

Wallie's short laugh was cynical.

“It might drown somebody half a mile from me, but it wouldn't settle the dust in my dooryard.”

“I see you're gittin' homesteaditis,” Pinkey commented, “but jest the same them clouds look like they meant business.”

Wallie felt a glimmer of hope in spite of himself, and he scrutinized the clouds closely.

“They do look black,” he admitted. “But since it hasn't rained for two months it seems too much to expect that it will rain when I need it so desperately.”

“It's liable to do anything—I've seen it snow here in August. A fur-lined linen duster is the only coat fer this country. I'll gamble it's goin' to do somethin', but only the Big Boss knows what.”

During breakfast, they got up at intervals to look through the doorway and, while they washed dishes and tidied the cabin, they watched the northwest anxiously.

“She's movin' right along,” Pinkey reported. “It might be a stiddy rain, and then ag'in it might be a thunder shower, though you don't often look for 'em in the morning.”

The light grew subdued with the approaching storm, and Wallie commented upon the coolness. Then he went out in the dooryard and stood a moment.

“The clouds are black as ink, and how still it is,” he said wonderingly. “There isn't a breath of air stirring.”

Pinkey was sittting on the floor oiling his saddle when he tilted his head suddenly, and listened. He got up abruptly and stood in the doorway, concentrating all his faculties upon some sound of which he alone was cognizant, for Wallie was aware of nothing unusual save the uncanny stillness.

“Hear that?” The sharp note in Pinkey's voice filled Wallie with a nameless fear.

“No—what?”

“That roar—can't you hear it?”

Wallie listened intently.

“Yes—like a crashing—what is it?”

“Hail! And a terror! We've got to run the stock in.”

He was off with Wallie following and together they got the cow and horses under shelter with all the speed possible. The sound preceded the storm by some little time, but each moment the roar and the crash of it grew louder, and when it finally reached them Wallie gazed open-mouthed.

Accustomed to hail like tapioca, he never had seen anything like the big, jagged chunks of ice which struck the ground with such force that they bounded into the air again. Any one of them would have knocked a man unconscious. It seemed as if they would batter his roof in, and they came so thick that the stable and corral could be seen only indistinctly. They both stood in the doorway fascinated and awe-stricken.

“Hear it pound! This is the worst I've seen anywhur. You're licked, Gentle Annie.”

“Yes,” said Wallie with a white face. “This finishes me.”

“You'll have to kiss your wheat good-by. It'll be beat into the ground too hard ever to straighten.” He laid an arm about Wallie's shoulder, and there was a sympathy in his voice few had heard there:

“You've put up a good fight, old pardner, and even if you are counted out, it's no shame to you. You've done good, fer a scissorbill, Gentle Annie.”

Wallie clenched his hands and shook himself free of Pinkey's arm while his tense voice rang out above the clatter and crash of the storm:

“I'm not licked! I won't be licked! I'm going to stick, somehow! And, what's more,” he turned to Pinkey fiercely, “if you don't stop calling me 'Gentle Annie,' I'll knock your block off!”

Pinkey looked at him with his pale, humorous eyes and beamed approvingly.

CHAPTER XIII.

Lifting a Cache.

The Prouty barber lathering the face of a customer after the manner of a man whitewashing a chicken coop, paused on an upward stroke to listen. Then he stepped to the door, looked down the street, and nodded in confirmation. After which he returned, laid down his brush, and pinned on a nickel badge, which act transformed him into the town constable. The patron in the chair, a traveling salesman, watched the pantomime with interest.

“One moment, please.” The barber-officer excused himself and stepped out to the edge of the sidewalk where he awaited the approach of a pair on horseback who were making the welkin ring with a time-honored ballad of the country:

As they came abreast the constable held out his hand and the pair automatically laid six-shooters in it and went on without stopping in their song:

Other citizens than the barber recognized the voices, and frowned or smiled as happened, among whom was Mr. Tucker repairing a sofa in the rear of his “secondhand store.”

Returning, the constable laid the six-shooters on the shelf among the shaving mugs and removed his badge.

“Who's that?” inquired the patron, since the barber offered no explanation.

“Oh, them toughs—'Gentle Annie' MacPherson and Pinkey Fripp,” was the answer in a wearied tone. “I hate to see 'em come to town.”

The pair continued to warble on their way to the livery barn on a side street:

The song stopped as Pinkey said:

“Shall we work together or separate?”

To this mysterious question, Wallie replied:

“Let's try it together first.”

After attending personally to the matter of feeding their horses oats, the two set forth with the air of having a definite purpose.

Their subsequent actions confirmed it, for they approached divers persons of their acquaintance as if they had business of a confidential nature. The invariable result of these mysterious negotiations, however, was a negative shake of the head.

After another obvious failure, Pinkey said gloomily:

“If I put in half the time and thought trying to be a senator that I do figgerin' how to git a bottle, I'd be elected.”

Wallie replied hopefully:

“Something may turn up yet.”

“I'd lift a cache from a preacher! I'd steal booze off my blind aunt! I'd——”

“We'll try some more 'prospects' before we give up. It's two years since I've gone out of town sober, and I don't like to establish a precedent. I'm superstitious about things like that,” said Wallie.

At this unquestionably psychological moment Mr. Tucker beckoned them from his doorway. They responded with such alacrity that their gait approached a trot, although they had no particular reason to believe that it was his intention to offer them a drink. It was merely a hope born of their thirst.

Their reputation was such, however, that any one who wished to demonstrate his friendship invariably evidenced it in this way, taking care, in violation of the ethics of bygone days, to do the pouring himself. Mr. Tucker winked elaborately when he invited them in and Wallie and Pinkey exchanged eloquent looks as they followed him to his Land Office in the rear of the store.

Inside, he locked the door and lowered the shade of the single window which looked out on an areaway. No explanation was necessary as he took a hatchet and pried up a plank. This accomplished, he reached under the floor and produced a tin cup and a two-gallon jug. He filled it with a fluid of an unfamiliar shade and passed it to Pinkey, who smelled it and declared that he could drink anything that was wet. Wallie watched him eagerly as it gurgled down his throat.

“Well?” Mr. Tucker waited expectantly for the verdict.

Pinkey wiped his mouth.

“Another like that and I could watch my mother go down for the third time, and laugh!”

“Where did you get it?” Wallie in turn emptied the cup and passed it back.

“S-ss-sh!” Tucker looked warningly at the door. “I made it myself—brown sugar and raisins. You like it, then?”

“If I had about 'four fingers' in a wash tub every half hour—— What would you hold a quart of that at?” Pinkey leaned over the opening in the floor and sniffed.

Mr. Tucker hastily replaced the plank and declared:

“Oh, I wouldn't dast! I jest keep a little on hand for my particular friends that I can trust. By the way, Mr. MacPherson, what are you goin' to do with that homestead you took up?”

“Hold it. Why?”

“I thought I might run across a buyer some time and I wondered what you asked.”

A hardness came into Wallie's face, and Tucker added:

“I wasn't goin' to charge you any commission—you've had bad luck and——”

“You're the seventh philanthropist that's wanted to sell that place in my behalf for about four hundred dollars, because he was sorry for me,” Wallie interrupted dryly. “You tell Canby that when he makes me a decent offer, I'll consider it.”

“No offense—no offense, I hope?” Tucker protested.

“Oh, no,” Wallie shrugged his shoulder. “Only don't keep getting me mixed with the chap that took up that homestead. I've had my eyeteeth cut.”

Extending an invitation to call and quench their thirsts with his raisinade when next they came to town, Tucker unlocked the door. After the two had wormed their way through the bureaus and stoves and were once more in the street, they turned and gave each other a long, inquiring look.

“Pink,” demanded Wallie solemnly, “did you smell anything when he raised that plank?”

“Did I smell anything? Didn't you see me sniff? That joker has got a cache of the real stuff, and he gave us raisinade! I couldn't git an answer from a barrel of that. He couldn't have insulted us worse if he'd slapped our face.”

“A man ought to be punished that would do a wicked thing like that.”

“You've said somethin', Gentle Annie.”

The two looked at each other in an understanding that was beautiful and complete.

The behavior of the visitors was nearly too good to be true—it was so exemplary, in fact, as to be suspicious, and acting upon this theory, the barber closed his shop early, pinned on his badge of office, and followed them about. But when at ten o'clock they had broken nothing, quarreled with nobody, and drunk only an incredible quantity of soda pop, he commenced to think he had been wrong.

At eleven when they were still in a pool hall playing “solo” for a cent a chip, he decided to go home. There he confided to his wife that no more striking example of the benefits of prohibition had come under his observation than the conduct of this notorious pair, who, when sober, were well mannered and docile as lambs.

It was twelve or thereabouts when two figures crept stealthily up the alley behind Mr. Tucker's secondhand store and raised the window looking out on the areaway. As noiselessly as trained burglars they pried up the plank and investigated by the light of a match.

“Well, what do you think of that?”

“I feel like somebody had died and left me a million dollars!” said Pinkey in an awed tone, reaching for a tin cup. “I didn't think they was anybody in the world as mean as Tucker.”

“You mustn't get too much,” Wallie admonished, noting the size of the drink Pinkey was pouring for himself.

“I've never had too much. I may have had enough, but never too much.” Pinkey grinned. “I don't take no int'rest in startin' less'n a quart.”

“I hope he'll have the decency to be ashamed of himself when he finds out we know what he did to us. I shouldn't think he'd want to look us in the face,” Wallie declared virtuously.

“He won't git a chanst to look in my face for some time to come if we kin lift this cache.”

Together they filled the grain sack they had brought and carefully replaced the plank, then, staggering under the weight of the load, made their way to a gulch, buried the sack, and marked the hiding place with a stone. With a righteous sense of having acted as instruments of Providence in punishing selfishness, they returned to town to follow such whims as seized them under the stimulus of a bottle of Mr. Tucker's excellent Bourbon.

The constable had been asleep for hours when a yell—a series of yells—made him sit up. He listened a moment, then with a sign of resignation got up, dressed, and took the key of the calaboose from its nail by the kitchen sink.

“I'll lock 'em up and be right back,” he said to his sleepy wife, who seemed to know whom he meant too well to ask. Under the arc light in front of the Prouty House he found them doing the Indian “stomp” dance to the delight of the guests who were leaning from their windows to applaud.

“Ain't you two ashamed of yerselves?” the constable demanded, scandalized—referring to the fact that Pinkey and Wallie had divested themselves of their trousers and boots and were dancing in their stocking feet.

“Ashamed?” Wallie asked impudently. “Where have I heard that word?”

“Who sold liquor to you two?”

“I ate a raisin and it fermented,” replied Wallie.

“Where's your clothes?” to Pinkey.

“How'sh I show?”

“You two ought to be ordered to keep out of town. You're pests. Come along!”

“Jus' waitin' fer you t'put us t'bed,” said Pinkey cheerfully.

The two lurched beside the constable to the calaboose, where they dropped down on the hard pads and temporarily passed out.

The sun was shining in Wallie's face when he awoke and realized where he was. He and Pinkey had been there too many times before not to know. As he lay reading the penciled messages and criticisms of the accommodation left on the walls by other occupants, he subconsciously marveled at himself that he should have no particular feeling of shame at finding himself in a cell.

He was aware that it was accepted as a fact that, in a way, he had gone to the bad. He had been penurious as a miser until he had saved enough from his wages as a common cow hand to buy his homestead outright from the State. After that he had never saved a cent; on the contrary, he was usually overdrawn. He gambled and lost no opportunity to get drunk, since he calculated that he got more entertainment for his money out of that than anything else, even at the “bootlegging” price of twenty dollars per quart which prevailed.

So he had drifted, learning in the meantime under Pinkey's tutelage to ride and shoot and handle a rope with the best of them. Pinkey had left the Spenceley ranch and they were both employed now by the same cattleman.

He rarely saw Helene, in consequence, but upon the few occasions they had met in Prouty she had made him realize that she knew his reputation and disapproved of it. In the East she had mocked him for his inoffensiveness, now she criticized him for the opposite. It was plain, he thought disconsolately, that he could not please her, yet it seemed to make no difference in his own feelings for her.

His face reddened as he recalled the boasts he had made upon several occasions and how far he had fallen short of fulfilling them. He was going to “show” them, and now all he had to offer in evidence was one hundred and sixty acres gone to weeds and grasshoppers, his saddle, and the clothes he stood in.

It was not often that Wallie stopped to take stock, for it was, an uncomfortable process, but his failure seemed to thrust itself upon him this morning. He was glad when Pinkey's heavy breathing ceased in the cell adjoining and he began to grumble.

“Looks like a town the size of Prouty would have a decent jail in it,” he said crossly. “They go and throw every Tom, Dick, and Harry in this here cell, and some slob has half tore up the mattress.”

“You can't have your private cell, you know,” Wallie suggested.

“I've paid enough in fines to build a cooler the size of this one, and looks like I got a little somethin' comin' to me.”

“I suppose they don't take that view of it,” said Wallie, “but you might mention it to the judge this morning.”

After a time Pinkey asked, yawning: “What did we do last night? Was we fightin'?”

“I don't know—I haven't thought about it.”

“I guess the constable will mention it,” Pinkey observed dryly. “He does, generally.”

“Let's make a circle and go and have a look at my place,” Wallie suggested.

Pinkey agreed amiably, and added:

“You'll prob'ly have the blues for a week after.”

The key turning in the lock interrupted the conversation.

“You two birds get up. Court is goin' to set in about twenty minutes.” The constable eyed them coldly through the grating.

“Where's my clothes?” Pinkey demanded, looking at the law accusingly.

“How should I know?”

“I ain't no more pants than a rabbit!” Pinkey declared astonished.

“Nor I!” said Wallie.

“You got all the clothes you had on when I put you here.”

“How kin we go to court?”

“'Tain't fur.”

“Everybody'll look at us,” Pinkey protested.

The constable retorted callously: “Won't many more see you than saw you last night doin' the stomp dance in Main Street.”

“Did we do that?” Pinkey asked, startled.

“Sure—right in front of the Prouty House, and Helene Spenceley and a lot of folks was lookin' out of the windows.”

Wallie sat down on the edge of his cot weakly, That settled it! He doubted if she would ever speak to him.

“I've got customers waitin',” urged the constable impatiently. “Wrap a soogan around you and step lively.”

There was nothing to do but obey, in the circumstances, so the shame-faced pair walked the short block to a hardware store in the rear of which the justice of the peace was at his desk to receive them.

“Ten dollars apiece,” he said, without looking up from his writing. “And half an hour to get out of town.”

Pinkey and Wallie looked at each other.

“The fact is, your honor,” said the latter ingratiatingly, “we have mislaid our trousers and left our money in the pockets. If you would be so kind as to loan us each a ten-spot until we have wages coming we shall feel greatly indebted to you.”

The court vouchsafed a glance at them. Showing no surprise at their unusual costume, he said as he fumbled in the pocket of his waistcoat:

“Such gall as yours should not go unrewarded. You pay your debts, and that's all the good I know of either of you. Now, clear out—and if you show up for a month the officer here is to arrest you.”

He transferred two bank notes to the desk drawer and went on with his scratching.

“Gosh!” Pinkey lamented, as they stood outside clutching their quilts, “I wisht I knowed whur to locate them Mackinaws. I got 'em in Lethbridge before I went to the army, and I think the world of 'em. I don't like 'poor-boys serge,' but I guess I'll have to come to it, since I'm busted.”

“What's that?” Wallie asked curiously.

“Denim,” Pinkey explained. “Overalls. That makes me think of a song a feller wrote up:

“That's a swell song,” Pinkey went on enthusiastically. “I wish I could think of the rest of it.”

“Don't overtax your brain—I've heard plenty. Let's cut down the alley and in the back way of the emporium. Oh!” He gripped his quilt in sudden panic and looked for a hiding place. Nothing better than a telegraph pole offered. He stepped behind it as Helene Spenceley passed in Canby's roadster.

“Did she see me?”

“Shore she saw you. You'd oughta seen the way she looked at you.”

Wallie, who was mortified and miserable over the incident, declared he meant never again to come to town and make a fool of himself.

“I know how you feel, but you'll git over it,' said Pinkey sympathetically. “It's nothin' to worry about, for I doubt if you ever had any show anyhow.”

Canby laughed disagreeably after they had passed the two on the sidewalk. “That Montgomery-Ward cow-puncher has been drunk again evidently,” he commented.

“I wouldn't call him that. I'm told he can rope and ride with any of them.”

He looked at her quickly. “You seem to keep track of him.”

She replied bluntly: “He interests me.”

“Why?” curtly. Canby looked malicious as he added: “He's a fizzle.”

“He'll get his second wind some day and surprise you.”

“He would!” Canby replied curtly. “What makes you think it?”

“His aunt is a rich woman, and he could go limping back if he wanted to; besides, he has what I call the 'makings.'”

“He should feel flattered by your confidence in him,” he answered uncomfortably.

“He doesn't know it.”

Canby said no more, but it passed through his mind that Wallie would not, either, if there was a way for him to prevent it.

CHAPTER XIV.

Collecting a Bad Debt.

Wallie and Pinkey picked up a few stray cattle on their way to the homestead on Skull Creek. It was late in the afternoon when they reached it, so they decided to spend the night there. The corral was down in places, but with a little work it was repaired sufficiently to hold the cattle they put in it.

As Pinkey had prophesied, it gave Wallie the “blues” to look at the place where he had worked so hard and from which he had hoped so much. He felt heartsick as he saw the broken fence posts and down wire, the weeds growing in his wheat field, the broken windowpanes and the wreckage inside his cabin. The door had been left open and the range stock had gone in for shelter, while the rats and mice and chipmunks had taken possession. Such of his cooking utensils as remained had been used and left unwashed and the stove was partially demolished.

The only thing which remained as he had left it was the stream of salt water that had cut a deeper channel for itself but had not diminished in volume.

“I'll go over to the Canby's and hit the cook for some grub and be back pronto,” said Pinkey.

Wallie nodded. He was in no mood for conversation, for the realization of his failure was strong upon him, and he could not rid himself of the mortification he felt at having made a spectacle of himself before Helene Spenceley.

The future looked utterly hopeless. Without capital, there seemed nothing to do but go on indefinitely working for wages. His aunt had sent word in a roundabout way that if he wished to come back she would receive him, but this he did not even consider. Sitting on what was left of his doorstep, he awaited Pinkey's return, in an attitude of such dejection that that person commented upon it jocosely when he rode up finally with a banana in each hip pocket that he had pilfered from the cook, together with four doughnuts in the crown of his hat and a cake in his shirt front.

“I tried to git away with a pie, but it was too soft to carry, so I put a handful of salt under the crust and set it back,” he said as he disgorged his plunder. “He charged me for the bread and meat, and wouldn't let me have no butter! It's fellers like the Canby outfit that spoil a country.”

When they had eaten, they spread their saddle blankets in the dooryard and with their saddles for pillows covered themselves with the slickers they carried and so slept soundly until morning. After breakfast, as they were leading their horses up the weed-grown path to the cabin to saddle them, Pinkey commented as a grasshopper flew up and hit him in the face:

“Did you ever see anything to beat the size of 'em. They look like biplanes flyin'. They say everything has some reason for bein'; but I never could figger what the Lord had in his head when he made grasshoppers and ticks and chiggers. Of course, they make good bait fer dudes to fish with and——

Wallie stopped in the path and looked at the friend of his bosom.

“Pink,” he said solemnly, “why wouldn't this make a dude ranch?”

Pinkey stared back at him.

“Gentle Annie,” he replied finally, “I told you long ago you was good for somethin' if we could jest hit on it. You're a born duder! You got the looks and the figger and a way about you that I've noticed takes with women. You'd make a great dude wrangler. B'leeve me, you've thought of somethin'!”

“I wasn't thinking of myself, but of the place here—the scenery—the climate—fishing in the mountains—hunting in season and——”

“And,” Pinkey interrupted, “the strongest stream of salt water in the State fer mineral baths, with the Yellowstone Park in your front dooryard!” In his enthusiasm he pounded Wallie on the back.

“It would be an asset, having the park so close,” the latter agreed, his eyes shining.

Pinkey went on:

“You kin run dudes whur you can't run sheep or cattle. What you need is room—and we're there with the room. Fresh air, grasshoppers, views any way you look—why, man, you got everything!”

“Except money,” said Wallie suddenly.

For an instant they both felt crushed. It was such a precipitous descent to earth after their flight. They walked to the cabin and saddled in a silence which was broken finally by Pinkey, who said vindictively:

“I'd rob a train to git money enough to turn fifty head of dudes loose on Canby. He'd be mad enough to bite himself. If he could help it he wouldn't have a neighbor within a hundred miles.”

Wallie's thoughts were bitter as he remembered the many injuries he had suffered at Canby's hands. It was a subject upon which he dared not trust himself to talk—it stirred him too much, although he had long ago decided that since he was powerless to retaliate there was nothing to do but take his medicine. Since he made no response, Pinkey continued while he tightened the cinch:

“If you could make a dude ranch out o' this and worry him enough, he'd give you about any price you asked, to quit.”

“I'd ask plenty,” Wallie replied grimly, “but it's no use to talk.”

“It wouldn't trouble my conscience none if I hazed a bunch of his horses over the line, but horses are so cheap now that it wouldn't pay to take the chance.”

“There's the Prouty Bank,” Wallie suggested ironically.

“Them bulletproof screens have made cashiers too hard to git at.” Pinkey spoke in an authoritative tone.

“We might as well let it drop. We haven't the money, so were wasting our breath. We'll lose the jobs we've got if we don't get about our business. Let's leave the cattle in the corral and scout a little through the hills—it'll save us another trip. I don't want to come here again soon—it hurts too much.”

Pinkey agreed, and they rode gloomily along the creek bank looking for a ford. A few hot days had taken off the heavy snows in the mountains so quickly that the stream was running swift and deep.

“That's treach'rous water,' Pinkey observed. “They's bowlders in there as big as a house where it looks all smooth on top. I know a place about a mile or so along, where I think it'll be safe.”

They had ridden nearly that distance when, simultaneously, they pulled their horses up.”

“Look at that crazy fool!” Pinkey ejaculated, aghast.

“It's Canby!”

“Nobody else! Watch him”—incredulously—“trying to quirt his horse across the crick!”

“Isn't it the ford?”

“I should say not! It looks like the place, but it ain't—he's mixed—he'll be in a jack pot quick if he don't back out. Onct his horse stumbles it'll never git its feet, in there.”

They rode close enough to hear Canby cursing as he whipped.

“Look at him punish the poor brute! See him use that quirt and cut him with his spurs! Say, that makes me sick to see a good horse abused!” Pinkey cried indignantly.

Wallie said nothing but watched with hard, narrowed eyes.

“I s'pose I'd oughta yell and warn him,” finally Pinkey said reluctantly.

“You let out a yip and I'll slat you across the face!”

Pinkey stared at the words—at Wallie's voice—at an expression he never had seen before.

“I know how you feel, but it's pure murder to let him git into that crick.”

“Will you shut up?” Wallie looked at him with steely eyes, and there was a glint in them that silenced Pink.

He waited wonderingly to see what it all meant. The battle between man and horse continued while they watched from the high bank. In terrified protest, the animal snorted, reared, whirled, while the rider plied the quirt mercilessly and spurred. Finally the sting of leather, the pain of sharp steel, and the stronger will won out and the trembling horse commenced to take the water.

Pinkey muttered, as, fascinated, he looked on:

“I've no idea that he knows enough to quit his horse on the downstream side. He'll wash under, tangle up, and be drowned before we get a chanst to snake him out. He's a gone goslin' right now.”

Cautiously, a few inches to a step, the horse advanced.

“There! He's in the bowlders! Watch him flounder! Look at him slip—he's hit the current! Good night—he's down—no, he's goin' to, ketch himself! Watch him fight! Good ol' horse—good ol' horse!” Pinkey was beside himself with excitement now. “He's lost his feet—he's swimmin'—strikin' out for the shore—too swift, and the fool don't know enough to give him his head!”

They followed along the bank as the current swept horse and rider down.

“He swims too high—he's playin' out—there's so much mud he'll choke up quick. It'll soon be over now.” Pinkey's face wore a queer, half-frightened grin. “Fifty yards more and——”

Wallie commenced to uncoil his saddle rope.

“You goin' to drag him out?”

Wallie made no answer but touched his horse and galloped until he was ahead of Canby and the drowning horse. Making a megaphone of his hands, he yelled.

Canby lifted his wild eyes to the bank: “Throw me a rope!” he shrieked.

A slow, tantalizing smile came to Wallie's face. Very distinctly he called back:

“How much damages will you give me for driving your cattle into my wheat?”

“Not a damn cent!”

The rope Wallie had been swinging about his head to test the loop promptly dropped. The horse was swimming lower at every stroke.

“Five hundred!” Fear and rage was in Canby's choking voice.

“Put another cipher on that to cover my mental anguish!” Wallie mocked.

The horse was exhausting itself rapidly with its efforts merely to keep its nose out, making no further attempt to swim toward the bank. Canby slapped water in its face with the hope of turning it, but it was too late. Its breathing could be heard plainly and its distended nostrils were blood-red.

Many things passed swiftly through Canby's calculating mind in the few seconds that remained for him to decide. His boots had filled and he was soaked to the waist; he knew that if he left the horse and swam for it he had small chance of success. He was not a strong swimmer at best, and even if he managed to get to the bank its sides were too high and steep for him to climb out without assistance. He looked at Wallie's implacable face, but he saw no weakening there; it was a matter of a moment more when the horse would go under and come up feet first.

“Throw me the rope!” His voice vibrating with chagrin and rage admitted his defeat.

Wallie measured the distance with his eye, adjusted the loop, and as it cut the air above his head Canby held up his hands to catch it when it dropped.

“Good work!” Pinkey cried as it shot out and hit its mark. “You never made a better throw than that, old kid!”

Canby slipped the loop under his arm and, as he took his feet from the stirrups, shouted for them to tighten up. The horse, relieved of his weight, took heart and struck out for the opposite bank, where a little dirt slide enabled it to scramble out. Shaking and dripping, at last it stood still at the top, while Canby, a dead weight, was dragged over the edge to dry land.

There was as much fury as relief in his face when he stood up and started to loosen the rope around his chest.

Wallie stopped him with a gesture.

“No, you don't! I take no chances when I play with crooks. You make out that check.”

“Isn't my word good?” Canby demanded.

“Not so far as I can throw my horse.”

“I haven't a check book,” he lied.

“Get it, Pink.”

The check book and indelible pencil which every sheep and cattleman carries was in the inside pocket of his coat.

“Fill it out.” Wallie passed the pencil to him. “And don't leave off a cipher by mistake.”

“I refuse to be coerced!” Canby declared defiantly. “I'll keep my word, but I didn't say when.”

“I'm setting the date,” Wallie replied coolly, “and that's just four minutes and a half from mow,” taking out his watch. “If I haven't got the check by then you'll pay for those locoed horses, too, or I'll throw you back.”

“You don't dare!”

“When you haven't anything to lose you'll dare considerable to get 'hunks,' and that's my fix| Besides, I need the money. Two minutes left—think fast.”

“You'll sweat blood for this before I'm through with you!”

“Time's up—yes or no?”

Canby shut his teeth. Silently Wallie passed the end of the rope to Pinkey, who understood and took a turn around his saddle horn.

Before he could resist, Wallie gave Canby a shove and pushed him over the bank. He struck the water with a splash and went out of sight. Immediately that the well-trained cow horse felt the strain it backed up and held the rope taut. Canby came to the surface, then dangled as the horse continued to hold off. As he strangled with the water he had taken in his lungs and struggled frantically in the air, it seemed beyond human belief that it was he—Canby—Canby the all powerful—in such a plight!

“Pay out a little rope, Pinkey. Give the fish more line.”

Once again Canby dropped back and came up gasping, coughing, fighting for his breath.

A little anxiously, Pinkey asked: “Don't you b'leeve he's had enough?”

“Too much scrap left in him yet,” Wallace replied, unmoved.

Canby shrieked at last: “I'll pay! Let me up!”

“You mean that?”

“Good God—yes!”

Pinkey led the horse back and in no gentle fashion Canby was pulled over the edge for the second time, where he lay limp. When his breath and strength returned he struggled to his feet.

“If you go in again you won't come up.” Wallie's voice was metallic and, searching his face, Canby saw that he meant exactly what he said. His hand was shaking as he filled out the check, using the saddle for a desk. Wallie looked at it and handed it back.

“You forgot the horses—six hundred is what they cost.”

Canby started to protest, then, with a crafty look which, fleeting as it was, Wallie caught, he made out a new check for fifty-six hundred.

Turning to Pinkey: “I'll give you a hundred and fifty for your horse.”

Pinkey hesitated. It was a hundred more than it was worth.

“I guess not.” Wallie's voice was curt. “I'm a clairvoyant, Canby, and I've read your thought. You can't stop payment by telephone, because Pink is going to close-herd you right here until I ride to Prouty and get this cashed.”

Pinkey's jaw dropped. “By the longhorn toads of Texas! I wouldn't 'a' thought of that in a month!”

As Wallie put his foot into the stirrup, for the first time his face relaxed. He looked over his shoulder and grinned:

“If you listen, maybe you'll hear something making a noise like a dude ranch, Pink.”

CHAPTER XV.

The Exodus.

Never had Mr. Cone put in such a summer! The lines in his forehead looked as if they had been made with a harrow and there were times when his eyes had the expression of a hunted animal. Pacifying disgruntled guests was now as much a part of the daily routine as making out the menus.

In the halcyon days when a guest had a complaint, he made it aside, delicately, as a suggestion. Now he made a point of dressing Mr. Cone down publicly. In truth, baiting the landlord seemed to be in the nature of a recreation with the guests of the Colonial. Threats to leave were of common occurrence, and Mr. Cone longed to be once more in a position to tell them calmly to use their own pleasure in the matter. But what with high taxes, excessive wages, extensive improvements still to be paid for, prudence kept him silent.

The only way in which he could explain the metamorphosis was that the guests were imbued with the spirit of discontent that prevailed throughout the world in the years following the war. The theory did not make his position easier, however, nor alter the fact that he all but fell to trembling when a patron approached to leave his key or get a drink of ice water at the cooler.

As he lay awake wondering what next they would find to complain of, he framed splendid answers, dignified yet stinging, but when the time came to use them he remembered his expenses and his courage always failed him.

In his heart, he felt that this could not go on forever—some day some one would speak just the right word and he would surprise them. He had come to listen with comparative equanimity to the statement that his hotel was badly managed, the service poor, and the food the worst served on the beach front, but there was the very strong possibility that some one would inadvertently touch a sensitive nerve and he would “fly off the handle.” When that happened, Mr. Cone dreaded the outcome.

Such were conditions at the Colonial when the folders arrived announcing the opening of the Lolabama Ranch to tourists. Messrs. MacPherson and Fripp, it stated, were booking guests for the remainder of the season and urged those who had a taste for the Great Outdoors to consider what they had to offer. The folders created a sensation. They came in the morning after a night of excessive heat and humidity. The guests found them in their mail when, fishy-eyed and irritable, they went in to breakfast.

While they fanned themselves and prophesied a day that was going to be a “scorcher,” they read of a country where the nights were so cool that blankets were necessary, where the air was so invigorating that languor was unheard of, with such a variety of scenery that the eye never wearied.

There were salt baths that made the old young again; big game in the mountains for the adventurous; fishing with bait in untold quantities; saddle horses for equestrians; innumerable walks for pedestrians; an excellent table provided with the best. the market offered; and, finally, a tour of the Yellowstone Park under the personal guidance of the hosts of the Lolabama in a stagecoach drawn by four horses, by motor, or on horseback as suited their pleasure.

Small wonder that life on the Colonial veranda suddenly looked tame after reading the folder and studying the pictures! Their discontent took the form of an increasing desire to nag Mr. Cone. Vaguely they held him responsible for the heat, the humidity, the monotony of the ocean, and their loss of appetite due to lack of exercise

On an impulse, Mr. Henry Appel and his wife, after consulting, got up abruptly and went inside for the purpose of having a plain talk with Mr. Cone. Mr. Cone, who was making out the weekly bills, pretended not to see them until Mr. Appel cleared his throat and said very distinctly:

“May I have your attention, Mr. Cone?”

Quaking, Mr. Cone stepped forward briskly and apologized. Ignoring the apology, Mr. Appel began impressively:

“You cannot have failed to see, Mr. Cone, that my wife and I have been thoroughly dissatisfied this summer, as we have been at no great pains to conceal it. We have been coming here for twenty-two seasons, but we feel that we cannot put up with things any longer and are hereby giving you notice that next Thursday our room will be at your disposal.”

“Is it anything in particular—anything which I can remedy? Perhaps you will reconsider?” Mr. Cone pleaded, looking from one to the other.

“Last night—at dinner”—Mrs. Appel eyed him accusingly—“I found—an eyewinker—in the hard sauce.”

“I'm v-very sorry—it was not my eyewinker—such things will happen—I will speak to the pastry cook and ask him to be careful.”

Mr. Budlong, who had come in to lay his grievance before Mr. Cone, spoke up:

“For two mornings, Mrs. Budlong and myself have been awakened by the man with the vacuum cleaner who has wanted to work in our room before we were out of it. I should judge,” he said acidly, “that you recruit your servants from the Home for the Feeble-minded, and, personally, I am sick of it!”

“It is almost impossible to get competent help,” Mr. Cone protested. “The man shall be discharged, and I promise you no further annoyance.”

Mr. Budlong, nudged by his wife, was not to be placated.

“Our week is up Monday, and we are leaving,” he said. Miss Mattie Gaskett, encouraged by the conversation to which she had listened, declared with asperity:

“There has been fuzz under my bed for exactly one week, Mr. Cone, and I have not called the maid's attention to it because I wished to see how long it would remain there. I have no reason to believe that it will be removed this summer. I am sure it is not necessary to tell you that such filth is unsanitary. I have decided that you can make out my bill at your earliest convenience.”

She ignored the protesting hand which Mr. Cone, panic-stricken, extended, and and made way for a widow from Baltimore who informed him that her faucet dripped and her rocking-chair squeaked, and since no attention had been paid to her complaints she was making other arrangements.

It was useless for Mr. Cone to explain that with the plumbers striking for living wages and the furniture repairers behind with their work, it had been impossible to attend immediately to these matters. Ruin confronted Mr. Cone as he argued, and begged them not to act hastily. But something of the mob spirit had taken possession of the guests in front of the desk who stood and glowered at him, and his conciliatory attitude, his obsequiousness, only added to it.

If nothing else had happened to strain Mr. Cone's self-control further, he and his guests might have separated with at least a semblance of good feeling, but the fatal word which he had feared in his forebodings, came from Mrs. J. Harry Stott, who majestically descended the broad staircase carrying before her a small, reddish-brown insect impaled on a darning needle. She walked to the desk and presented it for Mr. Cone's consideration. It was a most indelicate action, but the knowledge that it was such did not lessen the horror with which the guests regarded it.

Aghast, speechless, Mr. Cone, one of whose proudest boasts had been of the hotel's cleanliness, could not have been more shocked if he had learned that he was a leper.

“Where did you find it?” Mr. Cone finally managed to ask hoarsely.

“Walking on my pillow!” replied Mrs. Scott dramatically. “And I think there are others! If you will see that my trunks get off on the four-seventeen I shall be obliged to you.”

Mr. Cone knew it was coming. He felt the symptoms which warned him that he was going to “fly off the handle.” He leaned over the counter. Mrs. Stott's eyes were so close together that, like Cyclops, she seemed to have but one, and they had the appearance of growing even closer as Mr. Cone looked into them.

“Do not give yourself any concern on that score, madam. Your trunks will be at the station as soon as they are ready, and it will please me if you will follow them. For twelve years I have been pretending not to know that you used the hotel soap to do your washing in the bathtub, and it is a relief to mention it to you.

“And Miss Gaskett,” the deadly coldness of his voice made her shiver, “I doubt if the fuzz under your bed has troubled you as much as the fact that for three summers your cat has had kittens in the linen closet has annoyed me.”

The Baltimore widow had his attention next:

“It is possible that the drip from your faucet and the squeak in your rocking-chair gets on your nerves, my dear lady, but so does your daily caterwauling on the hotel piano.

“I shall miss your check, certainly, Mr. Appel, but not nearly so much as I shall enjoy the relief from listening to the story of the way you got your start as a 'breaker boy' in the coal region.”

He bowed with the irony of Mephistopheles to Mrs. Budlong:

“Instead of discharging the man with the vacuum cleaner, I shall give him for his large family the cake and fruit you would have carried away from the table in your capacious pocket if you had been here.”

His eyes swept them all. He would have given Mr. Budlong his attention, but that person's vanishing back was all he could see of him, so he turned to the others and shouted:

“Go! The sooner the better! Get out of my sight—the whole lot of you! I'm going to a rest cure!”

His hand traveled toward the potato he used as a pen wiper, and there was something so significant in the action when taken in connection with his menacing expression that, without a word, they obeyed him.