w-punchers bore names of various denominations. There was Honey
Wiggin; there was Nebrasky, and Dollar Bill, and Chalkeye. And they came
from farms and cities, from Maine and from California. But the romance
of American adventure had drawn them all alike to this great playground
of young men, and in their courage, their generosity, and their
amusement at me they bore a close resemblance to each other. Each one
would silently observe my achievements with the hammer and the chisel.
Then he would retire to the bunk-house, and presently I would over hear
laughter. But this was only in the morning. In the afternoon on many
days of the summer which I spent at the Sunk Creek Ranch I would go
shooting, or ride up toward the entrance of the canyon and watch the men
working on the irrigation ditches. Pleasant systems of water running
in channels were being led through the soil, and there was a sound of
rippling here and there among the yellow grain; the green thick alfalfa
grass waved almost, it seemed, of its own accord, for the wind never
blew; and when at evening the sun lay against the plain, the rift of the
canyon was filled with a violet light, and the Bow Leg Mountains became
transfigured with hues of floating and unimaginable color. The sun shone
in a sky where never a cloud came, and noon was not too warm nor the
dark too cool. And so for two months I went through these pleasant
uneventful days, improving the chickens, an object of mirth, living in
the open air, and basking in the perfection of content.

I was justly styled a tenderfoot. Mrs. Henry had in the beginning
endeavored to shield me from this humiliation; but when she found that I
was inveterate in laying my inexperience of Western matters bare to all
the world, begging to be enlightened upon rattlesnakes, prairie-dogs,
owls, blue and willow grouse, sage-hens, how to rope a horse or tighten
the front cinch of my saddle, and that my spirit soared into enthusiasm
at the mere sight of so ordinary an animal as a white-tailed deer, she
let me rush about with my firearms and made no further effort to stave
off the ridicule that my blunders perpetually earned from the ranch
hands, her own humorous husband, and any chance visitor who stopped for
a meal or stayed the night.

I was not called by my name after the first feeble etiquette due to a
stranger in his first few hours had died away. I was known simply as
"the tenderfoot." I was introduced to the neighborhood (a c