nce I've been old
enough to remember!"

"You'd kind of planned to see things, eh?" says I.

"Why, yes," says Bentley. "There isn't much excitement out on the
ranch, you know. Of course, we ride into Palopinto once or twice a
month, and sometimes take a run up to Dallas; but that's not like
getting to New York."

"No," says I. "I guess you're able to tell the difference between this
burg and them places you mention, without lookin' twice. What is
Dallas, a water tank stop?"

"It's a little bigger'n that," says he, kind of smilin'.

But he was a nice, quiet actin' youth; didn't talk loud, nor go through
any tough motions. I see right off that I'd been handed the wrong set
of specifications, and I didn't lose any time framin' him up accordin'
to new lines. I knew his kind like a book. You could turn him loose
in New York for a week, and the most desperate thing he'd find to do
would be smokin' cigarettes on the back seat of a rubberneck waggon.
And yet he'd come all the way from the jumpin' off place to have a
little innocent fun.

"Uncle Henry wrote me," says he, "that while I'm here I'd better take
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and visit St. Patrick's Cathedral
and Grant's Tomb. But say, I'd like something a little livelier than
that, you know."

He was so mild about it that I works up enough sympathy to last an S.
P. C. A. president a year. I could see just what he was achin' for.
It wa'n't a sight of oil paintin's or churches. He wanted to be able
to go back among the flannel shirts and tell the boys tales that would
make their eyes stick out. He was ambitious to go on a regular cut up,
but didn't know how, and wouldn't have had the nerve to tackle it alone
if he had known.

Now, I ain't ever done any red light pilotin', and didn't have any
notion of beginnin' then, especially with a youngster as nice and green
as Bentley; but right there and then I did make up my mind that I'd
steer him up against somethin' more excitin' than a front view of Grace
Church at noon. It was comin' to him.

"See here, Bentley," says I, "I've passed my word to kind of look after
you, and keep you from rippin' things up the back here in little old
New York; but seein' as this is your first whack at it, if you'll
promise to stop when I say 'Whoa!' and not let on about it afterwards
to your Uncle Henry, I'll just show you a few things that they don't
have out West," and I winks real mysterious.

"Oh, will you?" s