d into the horse trough and polishes the back of
his neck with a bar of yellow soap. Next he dries himself off on a
meal sack, uses half a bottle of scented hair oil on his Buffalo Bill
thatch, pulls on a striped gingham shirt, ties a red silk handkerchief
around his throat, and he's ready to receive comp'ny. I didn't see
Mrs. Merrity after she got herself fixed for the ball; but Hank told me
she was goin' to wear a shirt waist that she'd sent clear to Kansas
City for.

Oh, we got real chummy before I left. He came down to see me off the
day I started for Denver, and while we was waitin' for the train he
told me the story of his life: How he'd been rustlin' for himself ever
since he'd graduated from an orphan asylum in Illinois; the different
things he'd worked at before he learned the cow business; and how, when
he'd first met Reney slingin' crockery in a railroad restaurant, and
married her on sight, they'd started out with a cash capital of one
five-dollar bill and thirty-eight cents in change, to make their
fortune. Then he told me how many steers and yearlings he owned, and
how much grazin' land he'd got inside of wire.

"That's doin' middlin' well, ain't it?" says he.

Come to figure up, it was, and I told him I didn't see why he wa'n't in
a fair way to find himself cuttin' into the grape some day.

"It all depends on the Jayhawker," says he. "I've got a third int'rest
in that. Course, I ain't hollerin' a lot about it yet, for it ain't
much more'n a hole in the ground; but if they ever strike the yellow
there maybe we'll come on and take a look at New York."

"It's worth it," says I. "Hunt me up when you do."

"I shore will," says Hank. "Good luck!"

And the last I see of him he was standin' there in his buckskin pants,
gawpin' at the steam cars.

Now, I ain't been spendin' my time ever since wonderin' what was
happenin' to Hank. You know how it is. Maybe I've had him in mind two
or three times. But when I gets that 'phone message I didn't have any
trouble about callin' up my last view of him. So, when it come to
buttin' into a swell Fifth-ave. hotel and askin' for Hank Merrity, I
has a sudden spasm of bashfulness. It didn't last long.

"If Hank was good enough for me to chum with in Bedelia," says I, "he
ought to have some standin' with me here. There wa'n't anything I
could have asked that he wouldn't have done for me out there, and I
guess if he needs some one to show him where Broadway