e long road had not dimmed; a light-haired man, with his hat pushed
back from his forehead, and a speckled shirt on him, and trousers rather
tight--that was what the camp cook saw, standing exactly as he had
turned and posed at Lambert's first word.

Lambert drew a step nearer, and began negotiations for supper on the
basis of an even exchange.

"Oh, agent, are you?" said the cook, letting out a breath of relief.

"No; peddler."

"I don't know how to tell 'em apart. Well, put it away, son, put it
away, whatever it is. No hungry man don't have to dig up his money to
eat in this camp."

This was the kindest reception that Lambert had received since taking to
the road to found his fortunes on the All-in-One. He was quick with his
expression of appreciation, which the cook ignored while he went about
the business of lighting two lanterns which he hung on the wagon end.

Men came stringing into the light from the noise of unsaddling at the
corral with loud and jocund greetings to the cook, and respectful, even
distant and reserved, "evenin's" for the stranger. All of them but the
cook wore cartridge-belts and revolvers, which they unstrapped and hung
about the wagon as they arrived. All of them, that is, but one
black-haired, tall young man. He kept his weapon on, and sat down to eat
with it close under his hand.

Nine or ten of them sat in at the meal, with a considerable clashing of
cutlery on tin plates and cups. It was evident to Lambert that his
presence exercised a restraint over their customary exchange of banter.
In spite of the liberality of the cook, and the solicitation on part of
his numerous hosts to "eat hearty," Lambert could not help the feeling
that he was away off on the edge, and that his arrival had put a rein on
the spirits of these men.

Mainly they were young men like himself, two or three of them only
betrayed by gray in beards and hair; brown, sinewy, lean-jawed men, no
dissipation showing in their eyes.

Lambert felt himself drawn to them by a sense of kinship. He never had
been in a cow-camp before in his life, but there was something in the
air of it, in the dignified ignoring of the evident hardships of such a
life that told him he was among his kind.

The cook was a different type of man from the others, and seemed to have
been pitched into the game like the last pawn of a desperate player. He
was a short man, thick in the body, heavy in the shoulders, so
bow-legged that he weaved fr