at in the smoking section and discussed politics with a Chicago
drummer. He knew that Frank was very tired, and he let him sleep till
the diner was taken on at Lordsburg. Then he excused himself to the
traveling man.

"I reckon I better go and wake up my pardner. I see the chuck-wagon is
toddling along behind us."

Bucky drew aside the curtains and shook the boy gently by the shoulder.
Frank's eyes opened and looked at the ranger with that lack of
comprehension peculiar to one roused suddenly from deep sleep.

"Time to get up, Curly. The nigger just gave the first call for the
chuck-wagon."

An understanding of the situation flamed over the boy's face. He
snatched the curtains from the Arizonian and gathered them tightly
together. "I'll thank you not to be so familiar," he said shortly from
behind the closed curtains.

"I beg your pahdon, your royal highness. I should have had myself
announced and craved an audience, I reckon," was Bucky's ironic retort;
and swiftly on the heels of it he added. "You make me tired, kid."

O'Connor was destined to be "made tired" a good many times in the
course of the next few days. In all the little personal intimacies
Frank possessed a delicate fastidiousness outside the experience of the
ranger. He was a scrupulously clean man himself, and rather nice as
to his personal habits, but it did not throw him into a flame of
embarrassment to brush his teeth before his fellow passengers. Nor did
it send him into a fit if a friend happened to drop into his room while
he was finishing his dressing. Bucky agreed with himself that this
excess of shyness was foolishness, and that to indulge the boy was
merely to lay up future trouble for him. A dozen times he was on the
point of speaking his mind on the subject, but some unusual quality of
innocence in the lad tied his tongue.

"Blame it all, I'm getting to be a regular old granny. What Master Frank
needs is a first-class dressing-down, and here the little cuss has got
me bluffed to a fare-you-well so that I'm mum as a hooter on the nest,"
he admitted to himself ruefully. "Just when something comes up that
needs a good round damn I catch that big brown Sunday school eye of his,
and it's Bucky back to Webster's unabridged. I've got to quit trailing
with him, or I'll be joining the church first thing I know. He makes me
feel like I want to be good, confound the little swindle."

Notwithstanding the ranger's occasional moments of exasperation