Huh?"

"Yes. From New York."

"Uh-uh. I thought so. Well, stranger, we won't quarrel none over the
payin', an' your frien' can pile in with me."

Conniston turned, murmuring his thanks, to where Hapgood now was
sitting up. And the red-headed man climbed down from his seat and
began to unhitch his horses.

"You needn't git your frien' up jest now in case he ain't finished his
siesta. We won't move on until mornin'."

"Where are you going to sleep?" Hapgood wanted to know.

"I had sorta planned some on sleepin' right here."

"Right here! You don't sleep on the ground?"

The red-headed man, drawing serenely at his cigarette, went about
unharnessing his horses.

"Bein' as how I ain't et for some right smart time," he was saying as
he came back from staking out his horses, "I'm goin' to chaw real
soon. Has you gents et yet?"

They assured him that they had not.

"Then if you've got any chuck you want to warm up you can sling it in
my fryin'-pan." He dragged a soap-box to the tail end of the buckboard
and began taking out several packages.

"We didn't bring anything with us," Conniston told him. "We didn't
think--"

The new-comer dropped his frying-pan, put his two hands on his hips,
and stared at them. "You ain't sayin' you started out for the Half
Moon, which is close on a hundred mile, an' never took nothin' along
to chaw!"

Conniston nodded. The red-headed man stared at them a minute,
scratched his head, removing his hat to do so, and then burst out:

"Which I go on record sayin' folks all the way from Noo York has got
some funny ways of doin' business. Bein' as you've slipped me your
name, frien'ly like, stranger, I don't min' swappin' with you. It's
Pete, an' folks calls me Lonesome Pete, mos'ly. An' you can tell
anybody you see that Lonesome Pete, cow-puncher from the Half Moon,
has made up his min' at las' as how he ain't never goin' any nearer
Noo York than the devil drives him."

He scratched his head again, put on his hat, and reached once more for
his frying-pan.

CHAPTER IV

Lonesome Pete dragged from the buckboard a couple of much-worn quilts,
a careful examination of which hinted that they had once upon a time
been gay and gaudy with brilliant red and green patterns. Now they
were an astonishing congregation of lumps where the cotton had
succeeded in getting itself rolled into balls and of depressions where
the cotton had fled. Light and air had little difficulty in passing
th