red several
days until he encountered Emil Grizek and his outfit. By that time he
was half-starved and completely delirious. It took a month until he
was up and around again.

But Emil and the boys had nursed him through. They took turns caring
for him in the bunkhouse; their methods were crude but efficient and
Harry was grateful. Best of all, they asked no questions. Harry's
status was that of a hunted fugitive, without a Vocational Apt record
or rating. The authorities or any prospective employers would inquire
into these things, but Emil Grizek never seemed curious. By the time
Harry was up and around again, he'd been accepted as one of the bunch.
He told them his name was Harry Sanders, and that was enough.

Two months after they found him, he'd signed on with Emil Grizek and
found a new role in life.

Harry Collins, advertising copywriter, had become Harry Sanders,
working cowhand.

There was surprisingly little difficulty. Grizek had absentee
employers who weren't interested in their foreman's methods, just as
long as he recruited his own wranglers for the Bar B Ranch. Nobody
demanded to see Apt cards or insisted on making out formal
work-reports, and the pay was in cash. Cowhands were hard to come by
these days, and it was an unspoken premise that the men taking on such
jobs would be vagrants, migratory workers, fugitives from justice and
injustice. A generation or so ago they might have become tramps--but
the last of the hoboes had vanished along with the last of the freight
trains. Once the derelicts haunted the canyons of the big cities;
today there was no place for them there, so they fled to the canyons
of the west. Harry had found himself a new niche, and no questions
asked.

Oddly enough, he fitted in. The outdoor life agreed with him, and in a
matter of months he was a passable cowpoke; within a year he was one
of Grizek's top hands.

He learned to ride a bucking jeep with the best of them, and he could
spot, single out, and stun a steer in forty seconds flat; then use his
electronic brander on it and have the critter back on its feet in just
under a minute.

Work was no problem, and neither was recreation. The bunkhouse offered
crude but adequate facilities for living; old-fashioned
air-conditioning and an antique infra-red broiler seemed good enough
for roughing it, and Cookie at least turned out real man-sized meals.
Eating genuine beef and honest-to-goodness baked bread was a treat,
and so