usand miles in a check suit and a red necktie, just
to get another good licking. Ben must of been quite aggravated by that
time, for he wound up by throwing Ed into the crick in all his proud
clothes.

Ed was just as honest about it as before. He says Ben licked him fair.
But it hadn't changed his mind. He felt that Ben's report had knocked
his just celebrity and he was still hostile.

"Mebbe you can't lick Ben," I says to him again. "I can keep on doing my
endeavours," he says. "I had to come off in a friend of mine's coat
because my own was practically destroyed; but I'll be back again before
Ben has clumb very high on that ladder of his career."

The adventurer was interned at my house for ten days, till his bruises
lost their purple glow and he looked a little less like a bad case of
erysipelas. Then he started out again, crazy as a loon! I didn't hear
from him for nearly two years. Then I got a letter telling about his
life of adventure down on the Border. It seems he'd got in with a good
capable stockman down there and they was engaged in the cattle business.
The business was to go over into Mexico, attracting as little notice as
possible, cut out a bunch of cattle, and drive 'em across into the land
of the free. Naturally what they sold for was clear profit.

Ed said he was out for adventure and this had a-plenty. He said I
wouldn't believe how exciting it could be at times. He wanted to know
what Ben was promoted to by this time, and was he looking as hearty
as ever? Some day he was coming back and force Ben to set him right
before the world.

About a year later he writes that the cattle business is getting too
tame. He's done it so much that all the excitement has gone. He says I
wouldn't believe how tame it can be, with hardly any risk of getting
shot. He says he wouldn't keep on running off these Mexican cattle if it
wasn't for the money in it; and, furthermore, it sometimes seems to him
when he's riding along in the beautiful still night, with only God's
stars for companions, that there's something about it that ain't right.

But it's another year before he writes that he has disposed of his stock
interests and is coming North to lick Ben proper. He does come North. He
was correct to that extent. He outfitted at the Chicago Store in Tucson,
getting the best all-wool ready-made suit in Arizona, with fine fruit and
flower and vegetable effects, shading from mustard yellow to beet colour;
and patent-leath