outdoors. I know that the water froze in my pitcher the first night, and
that afterward I performed my ablutions in the kitchen, and dipped hot
water out of a tank with a blue dipper.

That first week I spent adjusting myself to the simple life, and trying to
form an unprejudiced opinion of my companions in exile. As for the said
companions, they sort of stood back and sized up my points, good and
bad--and I've a notion they laid heavy odds against me, and had me down in
the Also Ran bunch. I overheard one of them remark, when I was coming up
from the stables: "Here's the son and heir--come, let's kill him!" Another
one drawled: "What's the use? The bounty's run out."

I was convinced that they regarded me as a frost.

The same with Perry Potter, a grizzled little man with long, ragged beard
and gray eyes that looked through you and away beyond. I had a feeling
that dad had told him to keep an eye on me and report any incipient growth
of horse-sense. I may have wronged him and dad, but that is how I felt,
and I didn't like him any better for it. He left me alone, and I raised
the bet and left him alone so hard that I scarcely exchanged three
sentences with him in a week. The first night he asked after dad's health,
and I told him the doctor wasn't making regular calls at the house. A day
or so after he said: "How do you like the country?" I said: "Damn the
country!" and closed _that_ conversation. I don't remember that we had any
more for awhile.

The cowboys were breaking horses to the saddle most of the time, for it
was too early for round-up, I gathered. When I sat on the corral fence and
watched the fun, I observed that I usually had my rail all to myself and
that the rest of the audience roosted somewhere else. Frosty Miller talked