ntry where you used to herd
cattle?"

"That wasn't my reason. Principally, I wanted to see Lahoma; and
incidentally, my brother."

"Your brother? HE ain't in these parts, is he?"

"No," ruefully, "but I expected him to be. When I left home to turn
cow-puncher, I didn't tell anybody where I'd gone; but just before I
left for Oklahoma to turn farmer, I wrote to my brother. And about a
month ago, seeing things clearing up before me, I asked him to meet me
here at Tent City--he's interested in new towns; he's employed by a
rich man to plant hardware-stores, and I thought he might find an
opening here. He came on, and was here several weeks with a party of
sightseers from Chicago; but he left with them about a week ago."

Willock sat suddenly erect. "Couldn't have been that Sellimer crowd, I
reckon, from Chicago?"

"Yes--Mrs. Sellimer and her daughter, and some of their friends."

Willock whistled loudly. "And that up-and-down looking chap in the
gold nose-glasses was your brother?"

"Never thought of that," Bill exclaimed, "although he had your name--he
looked so different! But now that you've laid aside your cowboy
rigging, I guess you could sit in his class, down at the bottom of it."

Willock was uneasy. "I was told," he observed, "and I took the trouble
to get datty on the subject, that them Sellimers--the mother and
daughter, and the herd they drift with--is of the highest pedigree
Chicago can produce. It sort of jolts me to find out that anybody we
know is kin to the bunch!"

Wilfred laughed without bitterness. "Don't let my kinship to brother
Edgerton disturb your ideal. We're so different that we parted without
saying good-by, and although I had the weakness to imagine we might
patch up old differences if we could meet here in the desert, I suppose
we'd have fallen out in a day or two--we're so unlike. And as to Miss
Sellimer--Annabel Sellimer--she is the girl whose letters I was
carrying about with me when I first saw you. She refused me because I
was as poor as herself; so you see, the whole bunch is out of my class."

"That's good," Willock's face cleared up. "Mind you, I ain't saying
that as for me and Bill, we'd wouldn't rather sit with you in a dugout
than with them in a palace on Lake Michigan. But it's all a matter of
getting Lahoma out into the big world, and you gave me a terrible jolt,
scaring me that after all we'd made a mistake, and they was just of
your plain every-day clot