nuous
joy and surprise to them. His gestures, his strange poses, his frank
ribaldry of tongue and principle fascinated them. He was like a being
from a new world.

Strange to say, this new world he had entered did not exist to him. He
was an utter egoist of bricks and mortar. He had dropped out, he felt,
into open space for a time, and all it contained was an audience for
his reminiscences. Neither the limitless freedom of the prairie days
nor the grand hush of the close-drawn, spangled nights touched him.
All the hues of Aurora could not win him from the pink pages of a
sporting journal. "Get something for nothing," was his mission in
life; "Thirty-seventh" Street was his goal.

Nearly two months after his arrival he began to complain that he felt
worse. It was then that he became the ranch's incubus, its harpy, its
Old Man of the Sea. He shut himself in his room like some venomous
kobold [43] or flibbertigibbet, whining, complaining, cursing, accusing.
The keynote of his plaint was that he had been inveigled into a
gehenna [44] against his will; that he was dying of neglect and lack
of comforts. With all his dire protestations of increasing illness, to
the eye of others he remained unchanged. His currant-like eyes were
as bright and diabolic as ever; his voice was as rasping; his callous
face, with the skin drawn tense as a drum-head, had no flesh to lose.
A flush on his prominent cheek bones each afternoon hinted that a
clinical thermometer might have revealed a symptom, and percussion
might have established the fact that McGuire was breathing with only
one lung, but his appearance remained the same.

[FOOTNOTE 43: kobold--in German folklore an elf or gnome who
haunts underground places]

[FOOTNOTE 44: gehenna--(Biblical) a place of abomination; Hell]

In constant attendance upon him was Ylario, whom the coming reward of
the _mayordomo_ship must have greatly stimulated, for McGuire chained
him to a bitter existence. The air--the man's only chance for life--he
commanded to be kept out by closed windows and drawn curtains. The
room was always blue and foul with cigarette smoke; whosoever entered
it must sit, suffocating, and listen to the imp's interminable
gasconade concerning his scandalous career.

The oddest thing of all was the relation existing between McGuire and
his benefactor. The attitude of the invalid toward the cattleman was
something like that of a peevish, perverse chi