lf dropping into a
routine. In March began the spring branding, then the corralling and
breaking of the wild horses, the summer range-riding, the great fall
round-up, the shipping of cattle, and the riding of the winter range.
This happened over and over again.

You and I would not have suffered from ennui. The roping and throwing
and branding, the wild swing and dash of handling stock, the mad races
to head the mustangs, the fierce combats to subdue these raging wild
beasts to the saddle, the spectacle of the round-up with its brutish
multitudes and its graceful riders, the dust and monotony and
excitement and glory of the Trail, and especially the hundreds of
incidental and gratuitous adventures of bears and antelope, of thirst
and heat, of the joy of taking care of one's self--all these would have
filled our days with the glittering, changing throng of the unusual.

But to Senor Johnson it had become an old story. After the days of
construction the days of accomplishment seemed to him lean. His men
did the work and reaped the excitement. Senor Johnson never thought
now of riding the wild horses, of swinging the rope coiled at his
saddle horn, or of rounding ahead of the flying herds. His inspections
were business inspections. The country was tame. The leather chaps
with the silver conchas hung behind the door. The Colt's forty-five
depended at the head of the bed. Senor Johnson rode in mufti. Of his
cowboy days persisted still the high-heeled boots and spurs, the broad
Stetson hat, and the fringed buckskin gauntlets.

The Colt's forty-five had been the last to go. Finally one evening
Senor Johnson received an express package. He opened it before the
undemonstrative Parker. It proved to contain a pocket "gun"--a
nickel-plated, thirty-eight calibre Smith & Wesson "five-shooter."
Senor Johnson examined it a little doubtfully. In comparison with the
six-shooter it looked like a toy.

"How do you, like her?" he inquired, handing the weapon to Parker.

Parker turned it over and over, as a child a rattle. Then he returned
it to its owner.

"Senor," said he, "if ever you shoot me with that little old gun, AND I
find it out the same day, I'll just raise hell with you!"

"I don't reckon she'd INJURE a man much," agreed the Senor, "but
perhaps she'd call his attention."

However, the "little old gun" took its place, not in Senor Johnson's
hip pocket, but inside the front waistband of his trousers, and th