d traveled lamely. He circled the fire and came back
to them, offering it to anybody who might want to try his skill.

Hard as they were to shake out of the saddle, not a man of them, old or
young, could mount the rubber-shod steed of the city streets. All of
them gave it up after a tumultuous hour of hilarity but the bow-legged
cook, whom they called Taterleg. He said he never had laid much claim
to being a horseman, but if he couldn't ride a long-horned Texas steer
that went on wheels he'd resign his job.

He took it out into the open, away from the immediate danger of a
collision with a tree, and squared himself to break it in. He got it
going at last, cheered by loud whoops of admiration and encouragement,
and rode it straight into the fire. He scattered sticks and coals and
bore a wabbling course ahead, his friends after him, shouting and waving
hats. Somewhere in the dark beyond the lanterns he ran into a tree.

But he came back pushing the machine, his nose skinned, sweating and
triumphant, offering to pay for any damage he had done. Lambert assured
him there was no damage. They sat down to smoke again, all of them
feeling better, the barrier against the stranger quite down, everything
comfortable and serene.

Lambert told them, in reply to kindly, polite questioning from the elder
of the bunch, a man designated by the name Siwash, how he was lately
graduated from the Kansas Agricultural College at Manhattan, and how he
had taken the road with a grip full of hardware to get enough ballast
in his jeans to keep the winter wind from blowing him away.

"Yes, I thought that was a college hat you had on," said Siwash.

Lambert acknowledged its weakness.

"And that shirt looked to me from the first snort I got at it like a
college shirt. I used to be where they was at one time."

Lambert explained that an aggie wasn't the same as a regular college
fellow, such as they turn loose from the big factories in the East,
where they thicken their tongues to the broad a and call it an
education; nothing like that, at all. He went into the details of the
great farms manned by the students, the bone-making, as well as the
brain-making work of such an institution as the one whose shadows he had
lately left.

"I ain't a-findin' any fault with them farmer colleges," Siwash said. "I
worked for a man in Montanny that sent his boy off to one of 'em, and
that feller come back and got to be state vet'nary. I ain't got nothing
ag