taken him scarcely a moment to make up
his mind. The smile had not yet died out of Maloney's eyes when he spoke.

"Damn if I don't take a crack at it."

The man on the other side of the table stared at him.

"Meaning that, are you?"

"Yep."

"Might be some lively if Soapy gets wise to your intentions," he said in a
casual sort of way.

"I don't aim to declare them out loud."

That was all they said about it at the time. The rest of the evening was
devoted to pleasure. After dinner they took in a moving picture show. The
first film was a Western melodrama and it pleased them both immensely.

"I'd be afraid to live in a country where guns popped like they do in
moving picture land," Curly drawled. "Where is it anyhow? It ain't Texas,
nor Oklahoma, nor Wyoming, nor Montana, nor any of the spots in between,
because I've been in all of them."

Maloney laughed. "Day before yesterday that's the way I'd a-talked my own
self, but now I know better. What about your little stunt? Wasn't that
warm enough for you? Didn't guns pop enough? Don't you talk about moving
pictures!"

After the picture show there were other things. But both of them trod the
narrow path, Maloney because he was used to doing so and Flandrau because
his experiences had sobered him.

"I'm on the water wagon, Dick." He grinned ruefully at his friend.
"Nothing like locking the stable after your bronc's been stole. I'd a-been
a heap better off if I'd got on the wagon a week ago."

Since their way was one for several miles Maloney and Curly took the road
together next morning at daybreak. Their ponies ambled along side by side
at the easy gait characteristic of the Southwest. Steadily they pushed
into the brown baked desert. Little dust whirls in the shape of inverted
cones raced across the sand wastes. The heat danced along the road in
front of them in shimmering waves.

Your plainsman is a taciturn individual. These two rode for an hour
without exchanging a syllable. Then Curly was moved to talk.

"Can you tell me how it is a man can get fond of so Godforsaken a country?
Cactus and greasewood and mesquite, and for a change mesquite and
greasewood and cactus! Nothing but sand washes and sand hills, except the
naked mountains 'way off with their bones sticking through. But in the
mo'ning like this, when the world's kind o' smiley with the sunshine, or
after dark when things are sorter violet soft and the mountains lose their
edges--say, would you s