the bills. That last night with Barney MacTague hadn't been my night to
win, and I'd dropped quite a lot there. And--oh, what's the use? I was
broke, all right enough, and I was hungry enough to eat the proverbial
crust.

It seemed to me it might be a good idea to hunt up the gentleman named
Perry Potter, whom dad called his foreman. I turned around and caught a
tall, brown-faced native studying my back with grave interest. He didn't
blush when I looked him in the eye, but smiled a tired smile and said he
reckoned I was the chap he'd been sent to meet. There was no welcome in
his voice, I noticed. I looked him over critically.

"Are you the gentleman with the alliterative cognomen?" I asked him
airily, hoping he would be puzzled.

He was not, evidently. "Perry Potter? He's at the ranch." He was damnably
tolerant, and I said nothing. I hate to make the same sort of fool of
myself twice. So when he proposed that we "hit the trail," I followed
meekly in his wake. He did not offer to take my suit-case, and I was about
to remind him of the oversight when it occurred to me that possibly he
was not a servant--he certainly didn't act like one. I carried my own
suitcase--which was, I have thought since, the only wise move I had made
since I left home.

A strong but unsightly spring-wagon, with mud six inches deep on the
wheels, seemed the goal, and we trailed out to it, picking up layers of
soil as we went. The ground did not _look_ muddy, but it was; I have since
learned that that particular phase of nature's hypocrisy is called "doby."
I don't admire it, myself. I stopped by the wagon and scraped my shoes on
the cleanest spoke I could find, and swore. My guide untied the horses,