n "seeing the elephant and
hearing the owl." In their haste to become patrons of the town's
dispensaries of mirth and good cheer the last ones to depart must have
left the great wooden gate swinging open.

Curly had satisfied the hunger of an anaconda and the thirst of a
camel, so he was neither in the mood nor the condition of an explorer.
He zigzagged his way to the first wagon that his eyesight
distinguished in the semi-darkness under the shed. It was a two-horse
wagon with a top of white canvas. The wagon was half filled with loose
piles of wool sacks, two or three great bundles of grey blankets, and
a number of bales, bundles, and boxes. A reasoning eye would have
estimated the load at once as ranch supplies, bound on the morrow for
some outlying hacienda. But to the drowsy intelligence of Curly they
represented only warmth and softness and protection against the cold
humidity of the night. After several unlucky efforts, at last he
conquered gravity so far as to climb over a wheel and pitch forward
upon the best and warmest bed he had fallen upon in many a day. Then
he became instinctively a burrowing animal, and dug his way like a
prairie-dog down among the sacks and blankets, hiding himself from the
cold air as snug and safe as a bear in his den. For three nights sleep
had visited Curly only in broken and shivering doses. So now, when
Morpheus condescended to pay him a call, Curly got such a strangle
hold on the mythological old gentleman that it was a wonder that
anyone else in the whole world got a wink of sleep that night.

*****

Six cowpunchers of the Cibolo Ranch were waiting around the door of
the ranch store. Their ponies cropped grass near by, tied in the Texas
fashion--which is not tied at all. Their bridle reins had been dropped
to the earth, which is a more effectual way of securing them (such is
the power of habit and imagination) than you could devise out of a
half-inch rope and a live-oak tree.

These guardians of the cow lounged about, each with a brown cigarette
paper in his hand, and gently but unceasingly cursed Sam Revell, the
storekeeper. Sam stood in the door, snapping the red elastic bands on
his pink madras shirtsleeves and looking down affectionately at the
only pair of tan shoes within a forty-mile radius. His offence had
been serious, and he was divided between humble apology and admiration
for the beauty of his raiment. He had allowed the ranch stock of
"smoking" to become exhaust