thrust some two dozen photographs, fly-specked and yellow, while the cut
of the subjects' clothes bore additional evidence of their antiquity.

"Lord, no! I don't know none of 'em. There was a couple of travelin'
photygraphers got snowed up here several year ago and I bought ten
dollars' worth of old pictures off 'em for company. I got 'em all named,
and it's real entertainin' settin' here evenin's makin' up yarns about
'em that's more'n half true, maybe--Mis' Taylor over to Happy Wigwam
says I'm kind of a medium."

Glancing at his guest he observed that his eyes were fixed intently upon
a photograph in the center and his expression was so peculiar that
Bowers asked, curiously:

"Ary friend o' yours in my gallery?"

"Not to say friend, exactly," was the dry answer, "but what-fer-a-yarn
have you made up about that feller?"

"Well, sir," Bowers said whimsically, "I'm sorry to tell you but that
feller had a bad endin'. He had everything done fur him, too--good
raisin' and an education, but it was all wasted. That horse there was,
as you might say, his undoin'. It was just fast enough to be beat
everywhur he run him. But he kept on backin' him till it broke him--no,
sir, he hadn't a dollar! Lost everything his Old Man left him and then
took to drinkin'. His wife quit him and his only child died callin' for
its father. After that he drunk harder than ever, and finally died in
the asylum thinkin' he was Marcus Daly." He demanded eagerly, "How clost
have I come to it?"

"Knowin' what I know, it makes me creepy settin' here listenin'."

"Shoo! I ain't that good, am I?" Bowers looked his pleasure at the
tribute.

"Good?" ironically. "You oughta sew spangles on your shirt and wear
ear-rings and git you a fortune-tellin' wagon. You're right about
everything except that that horse never was beat while he owned him and
he win about twenty thousand dollars on him, and that the last time I
saw that feller he could buy sixteen outfits like this one without
crampin' him, and instead of goin' to the asylum they sent him to the
state senate."

Bowers laughed loudly to cover his annoyance at having bitten.

"It's come about queer, though," he said, "your knowin' him."

The stranger seemed to check an impulse to say something further;
instead, he volunteered to wipe the dishes.

"No, you go out and set in the shade--it's cooler."

The truth was, Bowers did not want the man in the wagon, for his first
feeling of mistrust an