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 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.

They were rolling southward on the International. The timber was
huddling into little, dense green motts at rare distances before the
inundation of the downright, vert prairies. This was the land of the
ranches; the domain of the kings of the kine.

McGuire sat, collapsed into his corner of the seat, receiving with
acid suspicion the conversation of the cattleman. What was the "game"
of this big "geezer" who was carrying him off? Altruism would have
been McGuire's last guess. "He ain't no farmer," thought the captive,
"and he ain't no con man, f