s vagrant thoughts. All this
was Weary's life in Portland.

Not exactly hilarious, that life. Not a homelike one to a man fresh
from eating, sleeping, working, reveling with fellows who would
cheerfully give him the coat upon their straight backs if he needed it;
fight for him, laugh at him, or laugh with him, tease him, bully him,
love him like a brother--in short, fresh from Jim Whitmore's Happy
Family.

No one hailed him as Weary; his fellow hostlers called him simply Bill.
No one knew the life he knew or loved the things he loved. His stories
of wild rides and hard drives must be explained as he went along and
fell even then upon barren soil; so he gave up telling them. Even his
speech, colored as it was with the West which lies East of the
Cascades, sounded strange in their ears and set him apart. They
referred to him as "the cowboy".

Sometimes, when the skies were leaden and the dead atmosphere pressed
his very soul to the dank earth, Weary would hoist his umbrella and
walk and walk and walk, till the streets grew empty around him and his
footsteps sounded hollow on the pavements. One Sunday when it was not
actually raining he hired a horse and rode into the country--and he
came back draggled and unhappy from plodding through the mud, and he
never repeated the experiment.

Sometimes he would sit all the evening in his damp-walled room and
smoke cigarettes and wonder what the boys were doing, down in the
bunk-house at home. He wondered if they kept Glory up--or if he was
rustling on the range, his sorrel back humped to the storms and the
deviltry gone out of him with the grim battle for mere life.

Perhaps there was a dance somewhere; it was a cinch they would all be
there--and Happy Jack would wear the same red necktie and the same
painful smile of embarrassment, and there would be a squabble over the
piece of bar mirror to shave by. And the schoolma'am-- But here
Weary's thoughts would shy and stop abruptly, and if it were not too
late he would put on his hat and go to a show; one of those ten-cent
continuous-performance places, where the Swede and the Dutchman
flourish and the Boneless Man ties himself in knots.

A man will grow accustomed to anything, give him time enough. When
four months had passed in this fashion, Weary began insensibly to turn
more to the present and less often, to the past. His work was not
hard, the pay was good and he learned the ways of the town and got more
in touch