es----"

"Fences?"

"Yes, forty thousand acres all fenced in, like Texas."

"You don't tell me?"

"Needs men, Wood says. I thought maybe----"

The Duke didn't finish it; just left it swinging that way, expecting
Taterleg to read the rest.

"Sure," said Taterleg, taking it right along. "I wouldn't mind stayin'
around here a while. Glendora's a nice little place; nicer place than I
thought it was."

The Duke said nothing. But as they went on toward the barber-shop he
grinned.

CHAPTER VII

THE HOMELIEST MAN

That brilliant beam falling through the barber's open door and
uncurtained window came from a new lighting device, procured from a
Chicago mail-order house. It was a gasoline lamp that burned with a gas
mantle, swinging from the ceiling, flooding the little shop with a
greenish light.

It gave a ghastly hue of death to the human face, but it would light up
the creases and wrinkles of the most weathered neck that came under the
barber's blade. That was the main consideration, for most of the
barber's work was done by night, that trade--or profession, as those who
pursue it unfailingly hold it to be--being a side line in connection
with his duties as station agent. He was a progressive citizen, and no
grass grew under his feet, no hair under his hand.

At the moment that the Duke and Taterleg entered the barber's
far-reaching beam, some buck of the range was stretched in the chair.
The customer was a man of considerable length and many angles, a shorn
appearance about his face, especially his big, bony nose, that seemed to
tell of a mustache sacrificed in the operation just then drawing to a
close.

Taterleg stopped short at sight of the long legs drawn up like a sharp
gable to get all of them into the chair, the immense nose raking the
ceiling like a double-barreled cannon, the morgue-tinted light giving
him the complexion of a man ready for his shroud. He touched Lambert's
arm to check him and call his attention.

"Look in there--look at that feller, Duke! There he is; there's the man
I've been lookin' for ever since I was old enough to vote. I didn't
believe there was any such a feller; but there he is!"

"What feller? Who is he?"

"The feller that's uglier than me. Dang his melts, there he is! I'm
going to ask him for his picture, so I'll have the proof to show."

Taterleg was at an unaccountable pitch of spirits. Adventure had taken
hold of him like liquor. He made a start for the do