honest dollar.'

"He went over the road a second time, and wasn't in the Federal prison
a year before he was released through influence. Prison walls were
never made to hold as cool a rascal as he was. Have you a match?"

* * * * *

It was an ideal night. Millions of stars flecked the sky overhead.
No one seemed willing to sleep. We had heard the evening gun and the
trumpets sounding tattoo over at the fort, but their warnings of the
closing day were not for us. The guards changed, the cattle sleeping
like babes in a trundle-bed. Finally one by one the boys sought their
blankets, while sleep and night wrapped these children of the plains
in her arms.




II

SEIGERMAN'S PER CENT


Towards the wind-up of the Cherokee Strip Cattle Association it became
hard to ride a chuck-line in winter. Some of the cattle companies
on the range, whose headquarters were far removed from the scene of
active operations, saw fit to give orders that the common custom of
feeding all comers and letting them wear their own welcome out must be
stopped. This was hard on those that kept open house the year