ering down the vague vistas of many
to-morrows.

"See here! What kind of a guy are you, anyhow? I come in here
yesterday and offered you a job and you promised you'd git to work
right away. You--"

"It was _to-day_ you speak of Montoya," corrected the Mexican.

"You're dreamin'," reiterated Pete. "It was _yesterday_ you said you
would go manana. Well, it's to-morrow, ain't it? You been asleep an'
don't know it."

An expression of childish wonder crossed the Mexican youth's stolid
face. Of a certainty it was but this very morning that Montoya's boy
had spoken to him! Or was it yesterday morning? Montoya's boy had
said it was yesterday morning. It must be so. The youth rose and
gazed about him. Pete stood aggressively potent, frowning down on the
other's hesitation.

"I go," said the Mexican.

Pete heaved a sigh of relief. "A fella's got to know how to handle
'em," he told the immediate vicinity. And because Pete knew something
about "handlin' 'em," he did not at once go for the horse, but stood
staring after the Mexican, who had paused to glance back. Pete waved
his hand in a gesture which meant, "Keep goin'." The Mexican youth
kept going.

"I ain't wishin' old Jose any hard luck," muttered Pete, "but I said
I'd send a boy--and that there walkin' dream _looks_ like one, anyhow.
'Oh, manana!'" he snorted. "Mexicans is mostly figurin' out to-day
what they 're goin' to do to-morrow, and they never git through
figurin'. I dunno who my father and mother was, but I know one
thing--they wa'n't Mexicans."

CHAPTER IX

ROWDY--AND BLUE SMOKE

It has been said that Necessity is the mother of Invention--well, it
goes without saying that the cowboy is the father, and Pete was closely
related to these progenitors of that most necessary adjunct of success.
Moreover, he could have boasted a coat of arms had he been at all
familiar with heraldry and obliged to declare himself.

[Illustration: Pete.]

A pinto cayuse rampant; a longhorn steer regardant; two sad-eyed,
unbranded calves couchant--one in each corner of the shield to kind of
balance her up; gules, several clumps of something representing
sagebrush; and possibly a rattlesnake coiled beneath the sagebrush and
described as "repellent" and holding in his open jaws a streaming motto
reading, "I'm a-comin'."

Had it been essential that Pete's escutcheon should bear the bar
sinister, doubtless he would have explained its presence with the eas