ir
nails, while the ponies to wear them milled behind him in the corral.
His eyes sparkled as he declared:

"We shore got a good dudin' outfit! But it's nothin' to what we _will_
have--watch our smoke! The day'll come when we'll see this country, as
you might say, lousy with dudes! So fur as the eye kin reach--dudes!
Nothin' but dudes!" He illustrated with a gesture so wide and vigorous
that if it had not been for his high heels hooked over a pole he would
have lost his balance.

"Yes," Wallie agreed, complacently, "at least we've got a start. And it
seems like a good sign, the luck we've had in picking things up cheap."

Instinctively they both looked at the old-fashioned, four-horse
stage-coach that they had found scrapped behind the blacksmith shop in
Prouty and bought for so little that they had quaked in their boots lest
the blacksmith change his mind before they could get it home. But their
fears were groundless, since the blacksmith was uneasy from the same
cause.

They had had it repaired and painted red, with yellow wheels that
flashed in the sun. And now, there it stood--the last word in the
picturesque discomfort for which dudes were presumed to yearn! They
regarded it as their most valuable possession since, at $10.00 a trip,
it would quickly pay for itself and thereafter yield a large return
upon a small investment.

Neither of them could look at it without pride, and Pinkey chortled for
the hundredth time:

"It shore was a great streak of luck when we got that coach!"

Wallie agreed that it was, and added:

"Everything's been going so well that I'm half scared. Look at that
hotel-range we got second hand--as good as new; and the way we stumbled
on to a first-class cook; and my friends coming out--it seems almost too
good to be true."

He drew a sigh which came from such contentment as he had not known
since he came to the State, for it seemed as if he were over the hard
part of the road and on the way to see a few of his hopes realized.

With the money he had collected from Canby he had formed a partnership
with Pinkey whereby the latter was to furnish the experience and his
services as against his, Wallie's, capital.

Once more the future looked roseate; but perhaps the real source of his
happiness lay in the fact that he had seen Helene Spenceley in Prouty a
good bit of late and she had treated him with a consideration which had
been conspicuously lacking heretofore.

If he made a success