t they regarded me as a frost.

The same with Perry Potter, a grizzled little man with long, ragged beard
and gray eyes that looked through you and away beyond. I had a feeling
that dad had told him to keep an eye on me and report any incipient growth
of horse-sense. I may have wronged him and dad, but that is how I felt,
and I didn't like him any better for it. He left me alone, and I raised
the bet and left him alone so hard that I scarcely exchanged three
sentences with him in a week. The first night he asked after dad's health,
and I told him the doctor wasn't making regular calls at the house. A day
or so after he said: "How do you like the country?" I said: "Damn the
country!" and closed _that_ conversation. I don't remember that we had any
more for awhile.

The cowboys were breaking horses to the saddle most of the time, for it
was too early for round-up, I gathered. When I sat on the corral fence and
watched the fun, I observed that I usually had my rail all to myself and
that the rest of the audience roosted somewhere else. Frosty Miller talked
with me sometimes, without appearing to suffer any great pain, but Frosty
was always the star actor when the curtain rose on a bronco-breaking act.
As for the rest, they made it plain that I did _not_ belong to their set,
and I wasn't sending them my At Home cards, either. We were as haughty
with each other as two society matrons when each aspires to be called
leader.

Then a blizzard that lasted five days came ripping down over that
desolation, and everybody stuck close to shelter, and amused themselves as
they could. The cowboys played cards most of the time--seven-up, or
pitch, or poker; they didn't ask me to take a hand, though; I fancy they
were under the impression that I didn't know how to play.

I never was much for reading; it's too slow and tame. I'd much rather get
out and _live_ the story I like best. And there was nothing to read,
anyway. I went rummaging in my trunks, and in the bottom of one I came
across a punching-bag and a set of gloves. Right there I took off my hat
to Rankin, and begged his pardon for the unflattering names he'd been in
the habit of hearing from me. I carried the things down and put up the bag
in an empty room at one end of the bunk-house, and got busy.

Frosty Miller came first to see what was up, and I got him to put on the
gloves for awhile; he knew something of the manly art, I discovered, and
we went at it fast and furious. I