the turgid whirlpool which was the sporting element of the town, and
would not leave it. Him the games and the women and the fighting drew
irresistibly. The other sickened of the place, and one day when all
the grassy hillsides shone with the golden glow of poppies to prove
that spring was near, almost emptied a bag of gold because he had
seen and fancied a white horse which a drunken Spaniard from the San
Joaquin was riding up and down the narrow strip of sand which was a
street, showing off alike his horsemanship and his drunkenness. The
horse he bought, and the outfit, from the silver-trimmed saddle and
bridle to the rawhide riata hanging coiled upon one side of the
narrow fork and the ivory-handled Colt's revolver tucked snugly in
its holster upon the other side. Pleased as a child over a Christmas
stocking, he straightway mounted the beautiful beast and galloped away
to the south, still led by Chance, the jester.

He returned in a week, enamored alike of his horse and of the ranch he
had discovered. He was going back, he said. There were cattle by the
thousands--and he was a cattleman, from the top of his white sombrero
to the tips of his calfskin boots, for all he had bent his back
laboriously all summer over a hole in the ground, and had idled in
town since Thanksgiving. He was a cowboy (vaquero was the name they
used in those pleasant valleys) and so was his friend. And he had
found a cowboy's paradise, and a welcome which a king could not cavil
at. Would Jack stake himself to a horse and outfit, and come to Palo
Alto till the snow was well out of the mountains and they could go
back to their mine?

Jack blew three small smoke-rings with nice precision, watched them
float and fade while he thought of a certain girl who had lately
smiled upon him--and in return had got smile for smile--and said he