as about all they was to that expedition. We all got to be
so friendly with one another that by the time we had trailed that bunch
into the stock yards, we was like one big family of elder brothers, an'
Jim, he teased me into goin' back to the Pan Handle with him.

Jim was an Englishman--a younger brother. Up to that time I had allus
supposed 'at bein' a younger brother was somewhat in the nature of an
accident, an' not a thing to be hurled in a feller's teeth; but over in
England it's looked upon as a heinius crime, an' the only thing a
younger brother can do to square himself is to get out o' sight. That's
how Tim happened to be in the Texas Pan Handle with a tidy little
fortune his aunt had left him, tucked away in a good-sized,
well-stocked ranch.

I took a good deal o' pains with him, 'cause he didn't have nothin' but
a book education, an' it wasn't altogether easy to get him to see the
true value o' things. He used to talk about Eton an' Oxford purty
solemn, until one night he helped me mill the herd durin' a Norther',
an' after that he took more kindly to the vital things o' life, but he
was a man, Jim was, an' he kept raisin' my wages right along until I
got that opulent feelin'. I never could stand prosperity those days;
just as soon as I had a weight o' money 'at I could notice, I begun to
grow restless, an' nothin' 'at Jim could do or say had much effect.

If things hadn't run in oil, I'd a-stayed right along, I reckon; but it
got so 'at the' wasn't a hitch from week to week, an' I couldn't stand
it. I never had a better friend in the world'n that cook was after he'd
saved my life.

Jim had a kid sort o' chorin' around the place an' keepin' us from
gettin' old an' stupid. One nice bright winter's day the kid went out
for a ride; his pony came lopin' in just at sun down in the face of a
blizzard, an' I went out to look for the kid. I found him trudgin'
toward home an' cussin' his luck somethin' terrible. I put him up
behind me an' by that time the wind was shootin' needles o' sleet into
my face 'till I couldn't see a yard ahead. The kid snuggled up to me
an' went to sleep, an' I gave the pony his head an' trusted to
luck--no, come to think about it, that night I trusted to somethin'
higher than luck, 'cause it was a perfect demon of a night.

The pony dropped from a lope to a walk an' then he put his nose to the
ground an' fairly shuffled along. I was wearin' sheepskin with the wool
on, but after a time t