ed and spurred foot across the other knee, plucked a minor chord
sonorously and began abruptly:

"Yo' kin talk about you coons a-havin' trouble--Well, Ah think Ah have
enough-a of mah oh-own--"

Hen's high-pointed Adam's apple slipped up and down in one great gulp of
ecstasy. He eased slowly down upon the edge of the bunk beside Bud and
gazed at him fascinatedly, his lashless eyes never winking, his jaw
dropped so that his mouth hung half open. Day nudged Dirk Tracy, who
parted his droopy mustache and smiled his unlovely smile, lowering his
left eyelid unnecessarily at Bud. The dimple in Bud's chin wrinkled as
he bent his head and plunked the interlude with a swing that set spurred
boots tapping the floor rhythmically.

"Bart, he's went and hired a show-actor, looks like." Dirk confided
behind his hand to Shorty McGuire. "That's real singin', if yuh ask me!"

"Shut up!" grunted Shorty, and prodded Dirk into silence so that he
would miss none of the song.

Since Buddy had left the pink-apron stage of his adventurous life behind
him, singing songs to please other people had been as much a part of his
life as riding and roping and eating and sleeping. He had always sung or
played or danced when he was asked to do so--accepting without question
his mother's doctrine that it was unkind and ill-bred to refuse when he
really could do those things well, because on the cattle ranges indoor
amusements were few, and those who could furnish real entertainment were
fewer. Even at the University, coon songs and Irish songs and love songs
had been his portion; wherefore his repertoire seemed endless, and if
folks insisted upon it he could sing from dark to dawn, providing his
voice held out.

Hen sat with his big-jointed hands hanging loosely over his knees and
listened, stared at Bud and grinned vacuously when one song was done,
gulped his Adam's apple and listened again as raptly to the next one.
The others forgot all about having fun watching Hen, and named old
favorites and new ones, heard them sung inimitably and called for more.
At midnight Bud blew on his blistered fingertips and shook the guitar
gently, bottom-side up.

"I guess that's all the music there is in the darned thing to-night," he
lamented. "She's made to keep time, and she always strikes, along about
midnight."

"Huh-huh!" chortled Hen convulsively, as if he understood the joke. He
closed his mouth and sighed deeply, as one who has just wakened from a
tra