dering Jew would have seemed a mere hermit. He had
learned everything the world could teach him, and he would tell you
about it.

I hate to be reminded of Pollok's "Course of Time," and so do you;
but every time I saw Jacks I would think of the poet's description
of another poet by the name of G. G. Byron who "Drank early; deeply
drank--drank draughts that common millions might have quenched; then
died of thirst because there was no more to drink."

That fitted Jacks, except that, instead of dying, he came to Paloma,
which was about the same thing. He was a telegrapher and station-and
express-agent at seventy-five dollars a month. Why a young man who
knew everything and could do everything was content to serve in such
an obscure capacity I never could understand, although he let out
a hint once that it was as a personal favor to the president and
stockholders of the S. P. Ry. Co.

One more line of description, and I turn Jacks over to you. He wore
bright blue clothes, yellow shoes, and a bow tie made of the same
cloth as his shirt.

My rival No.2 was Bud Cunningham, whose services had been engaged by
a ranch near Paloma to assist in compelling refractory cattle to keep
within the bounds of decorum and order. Bud was the only cowboy off
the stage that I ever saw who looked like one on it. He wore the
sombrero, the chaps, and the handkerchief tied at the back of his
neck.

Twice a week Bud rode in from the Val Verde Ranch to sup at the
Parisian Restaurant. He rode a many-high-handed Kentucky horse at a
tremendously fast lope, which animal he would rein up so suddenly
under the big mesquite at the corner of the brush shelter that his
hoofs would plough canals yards long in the loam.

Jacks and I were regular boarders at the restaurant, of course.

The front room of the Hinkle House was as neat a little parlor as
there was in the black-waxy country. It was all willow rocking-chairs,
and home-knit tidies, and albums, and conch shells in a row. And a
little upright piano in one corner.

Here Jacks and Bud and I--or sometimes one or two of us, according
to our good-luck--used to sit of evenings when the tide of trade was
over, and "visit" Miss Hinkle.

Ileen was a girl of ideas. She was destined for higher things (if
there can be anything higher) than taking in dollars all day through a
barbed-wire wicket. She had read and listened and thought. Her looks
would have formed a career for a less ambitious girl; but, ri