now, Happy, don't you dare to forget me. Good-bye."

I set her down in the road with her eyes misty an' her white teeth
set in her lips, an' my own eyes were so hazy like that I couldn't
see her when I looked back, an' then I rode away down the valley
trail.




CHAPTER TWO

CONVINCING A COOK


I'm as wild as any comet when I first swing out o' my regular orbit,
an' I rode on an' on, sometimes puttin' up for the night at a ranch
house an' sometimes campin' out in the open, where I'd lay till dawn
gazin' up at the stars an' wonderin' how things were goin', back at
the Diamond Dot. I mooned on until at last I wound up in the Pan
Handle without a red copper, an' my pony sore footed an' lookin'
like what a crow gets when the coyotes invite him out to dinner.

I drew rein one night along side a most allurin' camp fire. I had
noticed the herd when I came along in, an' they was dandies; big
solid five-year-olds, hog fat, but they wasn't contented--kept
fidgetin' around. When I struck the fire, a fair haired young feller
was readin' a book, two Greasers an' a half blood Injun was playin'
poker with an old bunch o' whiskers 'at wasn't a ridin' man at all
while the cook had turned in without washin' the dishes.