usty voice from somewhere yelled:
"Come an' git it!"

The rancher, espying Pan, rode over to him and said: "Stranger, did you
fetch your chuck with you?"

"No--sir," faltered Pan. "My mama--said for me to hurry back."

"Wal, you stay an' eat with me," replied the man, kindly. "Shore them
varmints might stampede an' we'd need you powerful bad."

Pan sat next this big black-eyed man, in the circle of hungry cowboys.
They made no more fun of Pan. He was one of them. Hard indeed was it
for him to sit cross-legged, after the fashion of cowboys, with a
steady plate upon his knees. But he had no trouble disposing of the
juicy beefsteak and boiled potatoes and beans and hot biscuits that
Tex, the boss, piled upon his plate.

After dinner the cowboys resumed work.

"Stand heah by the fire, kid," said Tex.

Then Pan saw a calf being dragged across the ground. A mounted cowboy
held the rope.

"The brand!" he yelled.

Pan stood there trembling while one of the flankers went down the tight
rope to catch the bawling, leaping calf. Its eyes stood out, it foamed
at the mouth. The flanker threw it over his leg on its back with feet
sticking up. A brander with white iron leaped close. The calf
bellowed. There was a sizzling of hair, a white smoke, the odor of
burned hide, all of which sickened Pan.

Then one of the cowboys came to him: "Reckon thet's yore mammy come for
you."

He lifted Pan up on Curly and led the pony away from the roundup, out
in the open where Pan espied his mother, eager and anxious with her big
dark eyes strained.

"Beg pardon, lady," spoke up the cowboy, touching his sombrero. "It's
our fault yore boy stayed so long. We're sorry if you worried. Please
don't blame him. He's shore a game kid an' will make a grand cowboy
some day."

CHAPTER TWO

So this was how Panhandle Smith, at the mature age of five, received
the stimulus that set the current of his life in one strong channel.
He called himself "Tex." If his mother forgot to use this thrilling
name he was offended. He adopted Tex's way of walking, riding,
talking. And all the hours of daylight, outdoors or indoors, he played
roundup. Stones, chips, nails--anything served for cattle--and he had
a special wooden image of himself and horse. Much of this time he
spent on the back of Curly, in the corral or the field, rounding up an
imaginary herd. At night his dreams were full of cowboys, chuck
wagons, pitching horses and