y regular,
at the ranch, mebby for a day or two, and then takes the trail, singin'
his little old song. He's kind of a outdoor poet. Makes up his own
songs."

"What was that one about Arizona that you gave 'em over to the State
House onct?" queried Lon Pelly.

"Oh, that wa'n't Cheyenne's own po'try. It was one he read in a magazine
that he gave me. Let's see--

"Arizona! The tramp of cattle,
The biting dust and the raw, red brand:
Shuffling sheep and the smoke of battle:
The upturned face--and the empty hand.

"Dawn and dusk, and the wide world singing,
Songs that thrilled with the pulse of life,
As we clattered down with our rein chains ringing
To woo you--but never to make you wife."

The Senator smiled a trifle apologetically. "There's more of it. But
po'try ain't just in my line. Once in a while I bust loose on
po'try--that is, my kind of po'try. And I want to say that we sure
clattered down from the Butte and the Blue in the old days, with our
rein chains jinglin', thinkin'--some of us--that Arizona was ours to
fare-ye-well.

"But we old-timers lived to find out that Arizona was too young to get
married yet; so we just had to set back and kind of admire her, after
havin' courted her an amazin' lot, in our young days." The Senator
chuckled. "Now, Lon, here, he'll tell you that there ain't no po'try in
this here country. And I never knew they was till I got time to set back
and think over what we unbranded yearlin's used to do."

"For instance?" queried Bartley.

Senator Steve waved his pudgy hand as though shooing a flock of chickens
off a front lawn. "If I was to tell you some of the things that
happened, you would think I was a heap sight bigger liar than I am.
Seein' some of them yarns in print, folks around this country would say:
'Steve Brown's corralled some tenderfoot and loaded him to the muzzle
with shin tangle and ancient history!' Things that would seem amazin' to
you would never ruffle the hair of the mavericks that helped make this
country."

"This country ain't all settled yet," said the foreman, rising. "Reckon
I'll step along, Steve."

After the foreman had departed, Bartley turned to the Senator. "Are
there many more like him, out here?"

"Who, Lon? Well, a few. He's been foreman for me quite a spell. Lon he
thinks. And that's more than I ever did till after I was thirty. And Lon
ain't twenty-six, yet."

"I think I'll step over to the drug-s