ob and any of you boys come out
to the hotel, I'll sure feed you good."

An eddy of smoke followed Sundown as he passed through the doorway. A
cowboy snickered. The room became silent.

"Call the poor ramblin' lightnin'-rod back," suggested a kindly puncher.

"He'll come back fast enough," asserted the perpetrator of the "joke."
"It's thirty dry and dusty miles to the water-hole ranch. When he gets
a look at how far it is to-morrow mornin' he'll sure back into the
fence and come flyin' for Antelope with reins draggin'. Set 'em up
again, Joe."

CHAPTER II

THE JOKE

Owing to his unaccustomed potations Sundown was perhaps a trifle
over-zealous in taking the road at night. He began to realize this
after he had journeyed along the dim, starlit trail for an hour or so
and found no break in the level monotony of the mesa. He peered ahead,
hoping to see the blur of a hill against the southern stars. The air
was cool and clear and sweet. He plodded along, happy in the prospect
of work. Although he was a physical coward, darkness and the solitudes
held no enemies for him. He felt that the world belonged to him at
night. The moon was his lantern and the stars were his friends.
Circumstance and environment had wrought for him a coat of cheerful
effrontery which passed for hardihood; a coat patched with slang and
gaping with inconsistencies, which he put on or off at will. Out on
the starlit mesas he had metaphorically shed his coat. He was at home.
Here there were no men to joke about his awkwardness and his ungainly
height. A wanderer by nature, he looked upon space as his kingdom.
Great distances were but the highways of his heritage, each promising
new vistas, new adventuring. His wayside fires were his altars, their
smoke the incense to his gods. A true adventurer, albeit timid, he
journeyed not knowing why, but rather because he knew no reason for not
journeying. Wrapped in his vague imaginings he swung along, peering
ahead from time to time until at last he saw upon the far background of
the night a darker something shaped like a tiny mound. "That's her!"
he exclaimed, joyously, and quickened his pace. "But Gee Gosh! I
guess them fellas forgot I was afoot. That hill looks turruble far
off. Mebby because it's dark." The distant hill seemed to keep pace
ahead of him, sliding away into the southern night as he advanced.
Having that stubbornness so frequently associated with timidity, he
plod