ifty of them started for me.

"I never had an idea steers could run so; you could have played checkers
on my heels all the way back. If Siclone hadn't come out and jollied
them, I'd never have got back in the world. I just jumped the pilot and
went clear over against the boiler-head. Siclone claimed I tried to
climb the smoke-stack; but he was excited. Anyway, he stood out there
with a shovel and kept the whole bunch off me. I thought they would kill
him; but I never tried to chase range steers on foot again.

"In the spring we got the rains; not like you get now, but cloud-bursts.
The section men were good fellows, only sometimes we would get into a
storm miles from a section gang and strike a place where we couldn't see
a thing.

"Then Siclone would stop the train, take a bar, and get down ahead and
sound the road-bed. Many and many a wash-out he struck that way which
would have wrecked our train and wound up our ball of yarn in a minute.
Often and often Siclone would go into his division without a dry thread
on him.

"Those were different days," mused the grizzled striker. "The old boys
are scattered now all over this broad land. The strike did it; and you
fellows have the snap. But what I wonder, often and often, is whether
Siclone is really alive or not."

I

Siclone Clark was one of the two cowboys who helped Harvey Reynolds and
Ed Banks save 59 at Griffin the night the coal-train ran down from
Ogalalla. They were both taken into the service; Siclone, after a while,
went to wiping.

When Bucks asked his name, Siclone answered, "S. Clark."

"What's your full name?" asked Bucks.

"S. Clark."

"But what does S. stand for?" persisted Bucks.

"Stands for Cyclone, I reckon; don't it?" retorted the cowboy, with some
annoyance.

It was not usual in those days on the plains to press a man too closely
about his name. There might be reasons why it would not be esteemed
courteous.

"I reckon it do," replied Bucks, dropping into Siclone's grammar; and
without a quiver he registered the new man as Siclone Clark; and his
checks always read that way. The name seemed to fit; he adopted it
without any objection; and, after everybody came to know him, it fitted
so well that Bucks was believed to have second sight when he named the
hair-brained fireman. He could get up a storm quicker than any man on
the division, and, if he felt so disposed, stop one quicker.

In spite of his eccentricities, which were many, and