f wide
Stetson, wing chaps, and Mexican spurs.

"Thought you was the agent. I couldn't see out," apologized the tramp.

The cowboy laughed. "He was scared to open her up, so I took a chanct,
seein' as I'm agent for the purvention of crulty to Hoboes."

"Well, you got a fine chance to make a record this evening" said
Sundown, estimating with experienced eye the possibilities of Antelope
and its environs. "I et at Albuquerque."

"Ain't a bad town to eat in," commented the puncher, gazing at the sky.

"I never seen one that was," the tramp offered, experimentally.

The cowboy grinned. "Well, take a look at this pueblo, then. You can
see her all from here. If the station door was open you could see
clean through to New Mexico. They got about as much use for a Bo in
these parts as they have for raisin' posies. And this ain't no garden."

"Well, I'm raised. I got me full growth," said Sundown, straightening
his elongated frame,--he stood six-feet-four in whatever he could get
to stand in,--"and I raised meself."

"Good thing you stopped when you did," commented the puncher. "What's
your line?"

"Me line? Well, the Santa Fe, jest now. Next comes cookin'. I been
cook in everything from a hotel to a gradin'-camp. I cooked for
high-collars and swalley-tails, and low-brows and jeans--till it come
time to go. Incondescent to that I been poet select to the T.W.U."

"Temperance?"

"Not exactly. T.W.U. is Tie Walkers' Union. I lost me job account of
a long-hair buttin' in and ramblin' round the country spielin'
high-toned stuff about 'Art for her own sake'--and such. Me pals
selected him animus for poet, seein' as how I just writ things
nacheral; no high-fluted stuff like him. Why, say, pardner, I believe
in writin' from the ground up, so folks can understand. Why, this
country is sufferin' full of guys tryin' to pull all the G strings out
of a harp to onct--when they ought to be practicin' scales on a
mouth-organ. And it's printed ag'in' 'em in the magazines, right
along. I read lots of it. But speakin' of eats and _thinkin_' of
eats, did you ever listen to 'Them Saddest Words,'--er--one of me own
competitions?"

"Not while I was awake. But come on over to 'The Last Chance' and
lubricate your works. I don't mind a little po'try on a full stummick."

"Well, I'm willin', pardner."

The process of lubrication was brief; and "Have another?" queried the
tramp. "I ain't all broke--only I ain't pay