shove your feet in
'em?"

Wallie preferred his own style of riding, however, 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."

This Wallie considered a very remote possibility, although he did not
say so.

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, travelled 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 magnificent 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 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 cowpuncher 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 cowpuncher potatoes! Wallie rode along with his mouth
watering and visualiz