gainst the truck. "But you go to a hotel and
rest. There's the Menger and the Maverick, and--"

"And the Fi'th Av'noo, and the Waldorf-Astoria," mimicked McGuire.
"Told you I went broke. I'm on de bum proper. I've got one dime left.
Maybe a trip to Europe or a sail in me private yacht would fix me
up--pa-per!"

He flung his dime at a newsboy, got his _Express_, propped his back
against the truck, and was at once rapt in the account of his
Waterloo, as expanded by the ingenious press.

Curtis Raidler interrogated an enormous gold watch, and laid his hand
on McGuire's shoulder.

"Come on, bud," he said. "We got three minutes to catch the train."

Sarcasm seemed to be McGuire's vein.

"You ain't seen me cash in any chips or call a turn since I told you
I was broke, a minute ago, have you? Friend, chase yourself away."

"You're going down to my ranch," said the cattleman, "and stay till
you get well. Six months'll fix you good as new." He lifted McGuire
with one hand, and half-dragged him in the direction of the train.

"What about the money?" said McGuire, struggling weakly to escape.

"Money for what?" asked Raidler, puzzled. They eyed each other, not
understanding, for they touched only as at the gear of bevelled
cog-wheels--at right angles, and moving upon different axes.

Passengers on the south-bound saw them seated together, and wondered
at the conflux of two such antipodes. McGuire was five feet one, with
a countenance belonging to either Yokohama or Dublin. Bright-beady of
eye, bony of cheek and jaw, scarred, toughened, broken and reknit,
indestructible, grisly, gladiatorial as a hornet, he was a type
neither new nor unfamiliar. Raidler was the product of a different
soil. Six feet two in height, miles broad, and no deeper than a
crystal brook, he represented the union of the West and South. Few
accurate pictures of his kind have been made, for art galleries are
so small and the mutoscope [35] is as yet unknown in Texas. After all,
the only possible medium of portrayal of Raidler's kind would be the
fresco--something high and simple and cool and unframed.

[FOOTNOTE 35: mutoscope--In 1894 Henry Norton Marvin and Herman
Casler patented the mutoscope, a device for showing
moving pictures. A sequence of photographs was
attached to a rotating drum, so that the images
were flipped rapidly from one to the next as the