other; "you're kind a emphatic in yer remarks.
Yeh ought to give the gentleman a chance to git used to the ways of
th' country. He'll be as tough as th' rest of us if you'll give him a
chance. I kin see it in him."

"Thank you," said Henderson. "I'm glad you do me justice. I wish you
wouldn't let daylight through me till I've had a chance to get my
quarter section. I'm going to be one of you, either as a live man or a
corpse. But I prefer a hundred and sixty acres of land to six feet of
it."

"There, now!" triumphantly cried the squat man. "Didn't I tell yeh? Give
him a show! 'Tain't no fault of his that he's a tenderfoot. He'll get
over that."

Gillispie shook hands with first one and then the other of the men.
"It's a square deal from this on," he said. "Come and have a drink."

That's how they met--John Henderson, John Gillispie, and John Waite.
And a week later they were putting up a shanty together for common use,
which overlapped each of their reservations, and satisfied the law with
its sociable subterfuge.

The life wasn't bad, Henderson decided; and he adopted all the ways of
the country in an astonishingly short space of time. There was a freedom
about it all which was certainly complete. The three alternated in the
night watch. Once a week one of them went to town for provisions. They
were not good at the making of bread, so they contented themselves with
hot cakes. Then there was salt pork for a staple, and prunes. They slept
in straw-lined bunks, with warm blankets for a covering. They made a
point of bringing reading-matter back from town every week, and there
were always cards to fall back on, and Waite sang songs for them with
natural dramatic talent.

Nevertheless, in spite of their contentment, none of them was sorry when
the opportunity offered for going to town. There was always a bit of
stirring gossip to be picked up, and now and then there was a "show" at
the "opera-house," in which, it is almost unnecessary to say, no opera
had ever been sung. Then there was the hotel, at which one not only
got good fare, but a chat with the three daughters of Jim O'Neal, the
proprietor--girls with the accident of two Irish parents, who were,
notwithstanding, as typically American as they well could be. A
half-hour's talk with these cheerful young women was all the more to be
desired for the reason that within riding distance of the three Johns'
ranch there were only two other women. One was Minerva Fitch,