for his belated breakfast.

"Optimistic hell!" grunted Bill. "You can't tell a man anything he
don't think he knows better than you do, till he's past thirty. I was
a fool to try, I reckon."

He glowered at the vanishing figure, noting anew how tall and straight
Jack was in his close-fitting buckskin jacket, with the crimson sash
knotted about his middle in the Spanish style, his trousers tucked
into his boots like the miners, and to crown all, a white sombrero
such as the vaqueros wore. Handsome and headstrong he was; and Bill
shook his head over the combination which made for trouble in that
land where the primal instincts lay all on the surface; where men
looked askance at the one who drew oftenest the glances of the women
and who walked erect and unafraid in the midst of the lawlessness.
Jack Allen was fast making enemies, and no one knew it better than
Bill.

When the young fellow disappeared, Bill looked again at the shifting
crowd upon which his eyes were wont to rest with the speculative gaze
of a farmer who leans upon the fence that bounds his land, and regards
his wheat-fields ripening for the sickle. He liked Jack, and the soul
of him was bitter with the bitterness that is the portion of maturity,
when it must stand by and see youth learn by the pangs of experience
that fire will burn most agonizingly if you hold your hand in the
blaze.

One of his night bartenders came up; and Bill, dismissing Jack from
his mind, with a grunt of disgust, went in to talk over certain
changes which he meant to make in the bar as soon as he could get