tant stirring life and
motion. During leisure hours, however, he was always confronted with
his lack of rider's equipment.

"Say, kid, who built them top boots of yourn?" asked one cowboy.

"Shore, I'll trade spurs with you," drawled another.

"Whar's yore fur chaps there, cowboy?" queried a third.

And so it went always and forever. The cowboys could not help that.
It was born in them, born of the atmosphere and spirit of the singular
life they lived. Nevertheless Pan loved them, and they were good to
him.

His best friends in this outfit were Si and Slick, both horse
wranglers, whose real names Pan never learned.

That roundup was prolific of wonderful experiences. One night when a
storm threatened the foreman called to the cowboys not on duty; "Talk
to 'em low, boys, fer they're gettin' ready."

He meant that the herd of cattle was likely to stampede. And when the
thunder and rain burst the herd broke away with a trampling roar. Pan
got soaked to the skin and lost in the rain. When he returned to camp
only the cook and wagons were there. Next morning the cowboys
straggled in in bunches, each driving part of the stampeded herd.

At breakfast one morning Pan heard a yell. "Ride him, cowboy!"

"Whoopee! Look at that outlaw comin' high, wide an' handsome!"

Pan just had time to see a terribly pitching red horse come tearing
into the circle of cowboys. His rider went shooting over his head to
alight among them. Then what a scattering! That red fiend spoiled the
breakfast and cleaned out the camp. How the cowboys reviled the poor
fellow who had been thrown!

"Huh! Broke yore collar bone?" yelled one. "Why you dod-blasted son
of a sea cook, he oughta hev broke yore neck!"

And Si, the horse wrangler said: "Charlie, I reckon it's onconsiderate
of you to exercise yore pet hoss on our stummicks."

One of the amazing things that happened during the winter was the
elopement of Miss Amanda Hill with a cowboy. Pan did not like this
fellow very well, but the incident heightened his already magnificent
opinion of cowboys.

Pan never forgot Lucy's first day of school when he rode over with her
sitting astride behind him, "ringin' his neck," as a cowboy remarked.
Pan had not particularly been aware of that part of the performance for
he was used to having Lucy cling to him. That embarrassed him. He
dropped her off rather unceremoniously at the door, and went to put his
horse in the corral. She was