-wagon. Then he got
papers and tobacco from a pocket of the silk shirt and began to roll a
cigarette. Inwardly he hoped that the act would not give him away to
the Happy Family, whom he felt in honor bound to deceive, and bewailed
the smoke-hunger that drove him to take the risk.

The Happy Family, however, was unsuspicious. His pink-and-white
prettiness, his clothes, and the baby innocence of his dimples and his
long-lashed blue eyes branded him unequivocally in their eyes as the
tenderest sort of tenderfoot.

"Get onto the way he rolls 'em--backward!" murmured Weary into Cal's
ear.

"If there's anything I hate," Cal remarked irrelevantly to the crowd,
"it's to see a girl chewing a tutti-frutti cud--or smoking a cigarette!"

Pink looked up from under his thick lashes and opened his lips to
speak, then thought better of it. The jingling of the cavvy coming in
cut short the incipient banter, and Pink turned and watched intently
the corralling process. To him the jangling bells were sweetest music,
for which ears and heart had hungered long, and which had come to him
often in dreams. His blood tingled as might a lover's when his
sweetheart approaches.

"Weary, you and Cal better relieve the boys on herd," Chip called.
"I'll get you a horse, P--Perkins"--he had almost said "Pink"--"and you
can go along. Then to-night you'll go on guard with Cal."

"Yes, sir," said Pink, with a docility that would have amazed any who
knew him well, and followed Chip out to the corral, where Cal and Weary
were already inside with their ropes, among the circling mass.

Chip led out a gentle little cow-pony that could almost day-herd
without a rider of any sort, and Pink bridled him before the covertly
watching crew. He did not do it as quickly as he might have done, for
he "played to the gallery" and deliberately fumbled the buckle and
pinned one ear of the pony down flat with the head-stall.

A new saddle, stiff and unbroken, is ever a vexation unto its proud
owner, and its proper adjustment requires time and much language. Pink
omitted the language, so that the process took longer than it would
naturally have done; but Cal and Weary, upon their mounts, made
cigarettes and waited, with an air of endurance, and gave Pink much
advice. Then he got somehow into the saddle and flapped elbows beside
them, looking like a gorgeous-hued canary with wings a-flutter.

Happy Jack, who had been standing herd disconsolately with two al