suppertime, Pink rode close to Cal and
looked as if he had something on his mind. Cal and Weary exchanged
glances.

"I'd like to ask," Pink began timidly, "how you fed that calf--before
you found his mother. Didn't he get pretty hungry?"

"Why, I carried a bottle uh milk along," Cal lied fluently. "When the
bottle went empty I'd catch a cow and milk it."

"Would it stand without being tied?"

"Sure. All range cows'll gentle right down, if yuh know the right way
to approach 'em, and the words to say. That's a secret that we don't
tell anybody that hasn't been a cowboy for a year, and rode fourteen
broncos straight up. Sorry I can't tell yuh."

Pink went diplomatically back to the calf. "Did you carry it in your
arms, or--"

"The calf? Sure. How else would I carry it?" Cal's big, baby-blue
eyes matched Pink's for innocence. "I carried that bossy in my arms
for three days," he declared solemnly, "before I found a cow with white
hind feet, one white ear, and the deuce uh--er--clubs----"

"Diamonds" corrected Pink, drinking in each word greedily.

"That's it: diamonds, on its right hind--er--shoulders----"

"The calf's was on its left side," reminded Pink reproachfully. "I
don't believe you found the right mother, after all!"

"Yeah, I sure did, all right," contended Cal earnestly. "I know,
'cause she was that grateful, when she seen me heave in sight over a
hill a mile away, she come up on the gallop, a-bawling, and--er--licked
my hand!"

That settled it, of course. Pink dismounted stiffly and walked
painfully to the cook-tent. Ten months out of saddle--with a new,
unbroken one to begin on again--told, even upon Pink, and made for
extreme discomfort.

When he had eaten, hungrily and in silence, responding to the mildly
ironical sociability of his fellows with a brevity which only his soft
voice saved from bruskness, he unrolled his new bed and lay down with
not a thought for the part he was playing. He heard with absolute
indifference Weary's remark outside, that "Cadwolloper's about all in;
day-herding's too strenuous for him." The last that came to him, some
one was chanting relishfully:

Mamma had a precious lamby his cheeks were red and rosy;
And when he rode the festive bronk, he tumbled on his nosey.

There was more; but Pink had gone to sleep, and so missed it.

At sundown he awoke and went out to saddle the night horse Chip had
caught for him, and then went to bed again. When