carelessly offered to unsaddle for Conniston and water and feed his
horse. And Conniston, while not ungrateful, answered with short
doggedness that he could do his own part of the work.

They came to the bunk-house to find that several of the boys had eaten
before them, that two or three of them were already in bed. The cook,
however, had supper waiting for them, kept hot in the oven of his big
stove. Conniston knew that he was hungry; during the ride in he had
thought longingly of a hot meal and bed. But now he learned what it
was to be hungry and at the same time too tired to eat. He drank some
coffee, ate a little bread and butter, and, pushing his plate away,
climbed into his bunk.

He thought longingly of silk pajamas and a hot bath--and started up
finding himself half asleep, dreaming of miles of wire fence, of
hammering staples and tightening wires, of laboring with breaking
back over holes which, as fast as he dug them, filled with the
shifting sand. And then--it seemed to him that he had been in bed ten
minutes--he heard the cook rattling his pots and pans and stove-lids,
and knew that the night had gone and that the second day of his new
life had come.

The first day had been purgatory. The second was hell. His raw,
blistered fingers shrank from his hammer-handle, from the sun-heated
iron bar. The muscles which through long idleness had grown soft, and
which had been taxed all day yesterday, cried out with sharp pains as
to-day they were called upon. He had thought that the night would have
rested him; instead it had but made his arms and hands and back stiff
and unfit. When ten o'clock came he felt as tired as he had been last
night at quitting-time. The heat was more intense, the day sultry,
with a thin film of clouds across the gray sky allowing the sun's rays
to scorch the earth, refusing to let the sand radiate the heat which
clung to it like a bank of heavy steam. Their water-bottle, although
they kept it always in the shade of some scorched tree or bush, grew
as warm as the air about it. Still Conniston drank great quantities of
the warm water until even it warred against him and made him sick. All
morning long he fought against a dull, throbbing headache. At noontime
he ate little, but sat still, with his bursting temples between his
hands.

Again the afternoon dragged on, unbearably long, each tortuous second
a slow period of agony. Lonesome Pete's stories of the range country
he heard, while he