o, having
gained three years by good behavior, Kit was released, after having
served fourteen years.

However Kit may still hanker for "a big, fat, four-year-old, long-horned
bank roll," and whatever may be his curiosity to "do 'Frisco proper," it
is not likely he will make any more history as a train robber, for at
heart Kit was always a better "good man" than "bad man."

CHAPTER VIII

CIRCUS DAY AT MANCOS

Cowboys were seldom respecters of the feelings of their fellows. Few
topics were so sacred or incidents so grave they were not made the
subject of the rawest jests. Leading a life of such stirring adventure
that few days passed without some more or less serious mishap, reckless
of life, unheedful alike of time and eternity, they made the smallest
trifles and the biggest tragedies the subjects of chaff and badinage
till the next diverting occurrence. But to the Cross Canon outfit Mat
Barlow's love for Netty Nevins was so obviously a downright worship, an
all-absorbing, dominating cult, that, in a way, and all unknown to her,
she became the nearest thing to a religion the Cross Canonites ever had.

Eight years before Mat had come among them a green tenderfoot from a
South Missouri village, picked up in Durango by Tom McTigh, the
foreman, on a glint of the eye and set of the jaw that suggested
workable material. Nor was McTigh mistaken. Mat took to range work
like a duck to water. Within a year he could rope and tie a mossback
with the best, and in scraps with Mancos Jim's Pah-Ute horse raiders
had proved himself as careless a dare-devil as the oldest and toughest
trigger-twitcher of the lot.

But persuade and cajole as much as they liked, none of the outfit were
ever able to induce Mat to pursue his education as a cowboy beyond the
details incident to work and frolic on the open range. Old
past-masters in the classics of cowboy town deportment, expert light
shooters, monte players, dance-hall beaux, elbow-crookers, and red-eye
riot-starters labored faithfully with Mat, but, all to no purpose. To
town with them he went, but with them in their debauches he never
joined; indeed as a rule he even refused to discuss such incidents with
them academically. Thus he delicately but plainly made it known to the
outfit that he proposed to keep his mind as clean as his conduct.

Such a curiosity as Mat was naturally closely studied. The combined
intelligence of the outfit was trained upon him, for some time