"Thanks," he
said dryly, "I reckon I'd better be moving."

But the other spoke quickly. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Acton, I did not
mean that for you."

The horseman dropped his hands again to the saddle horn, and resumed his
lounging posture, thus tacitly accepting the apology. "You have the
advantage of me," he said.

The stranger laughed. "Everyone knows that 'Wild Horse Phil' of the
Cross-Triangle Ranch won the bronco-riding championship yesterday. I saw
you ride."

Philip Acton's face showed boyish embarrassment.

The other continued, with his strange enthusiasm. "It was great
work--wonderful! I never saw anything like it."

There was no mistaking the genuineness of his admiration, nor could he
hide that wistful look in his eyes.

"Shucks!" said the cowboy uneasily. "I could pick a dozen of the boys in
that outfit who can ride all around me. It was just my luck, that's
all--I happened to draw an easy one."

"Easy!" ejaculated the stranger, seeing again in his mind the fighting,
plunging, maddened, outlawed brute that this boy-faced man had mastered.
"And I suppose catching and throwing those steers was easy, too?"

The cowboy was plainly wondering at the man's peculiar enthusiasm for
these most commonplace things. "The roping? Why, that was no more than
we're doing all the time."

"I don't mean the roping," returned the other, "I mean when you rode up
beside one of those steers that was running at full speed, and caught
him by the horns with your bare hands, and jumped from your saddle, and
threw the beast over you, and then lay there with his horns pinning you
down! You aren't doing that all the time, are you? You don't mean to
tell me that such things as that are a part of your everyday work!"

"Oh, the bull doggin'! Why, no," admitted Phil, with an embarrassed
laugh, "that was just fun, you know."

The stranger stared at him, speechless. Fun! In the name of all that is
most modern in civilization, what manner of men were these who did such
things in fun! If this was their recreation, what must their work be!

"Do you mind my asking," he said wistfully, "how you learned to do such
things?"

"Why, I don't know--we just do them, I reckon."

"And could anyone learn to ride as you ride, do you think?" The question
came with marked eagerness.

"I don't see why not," answered the cowboy honestly.

The stranger shook his head doubtfully and looked away over the wild
land where the shadows of the late