turn of the conversation. "You don't look as if you were real happy."

Cassidy winced. Then he hefted the club suggestively. "I've been doin'
things _yuh_ won't do!" he said savagely. "There's your bed over
there. Pick it up! Hit the breeze! _Hike!_"

"This yere's a friend of mine, Con," chortled Arkinsaw delightedly, as
he scrambled up the steps of the swing train a little later. "He
knowed my folks, back home. He's a real kind feller."

Con nodded and surveyed Cassidy's club with vast appreciation. The
train underwent a preliminary convulsion and began to pull out.

"Good-by!" yelled Cassidy. "Keep sober, yuh brindle-whiskered old
billy-goat!"

Arkinsaw's straggly beard waved in the air as he stuck his head out of
a window. His worn, furtive old face was riotous with joy. He was
going home--_home_! Safe and sober, with forty dollars and a clean
conscience, more than had been his in many a day.

"You bet I kin!" he bellowed back. "You're all right, Cass!"

Cassidy sniffed and turned again toward the town. "I don't reckon I
c'u'd stand these yere chuck-ranches off fer a meal," he soliloquized,
"not lookin' the way I am. To-morrow's all right; I'll be workin'
then. To-day--" He paused and ran his hand over his forehead. "Well,
to-day I reckon it'll be Mike's again--if he'll stand fer it."

And Mike fed him. Cassidy was harmless now. The fact that he asked for