And so if you see this story in print you will understand that
business is business, and that if Art gets very far ahead of
Commerce, she will have to get up and hustle.

I may as well add, to make a clean job of it, that you can't buy the
_chuchula_ plant in the drug stores.




VI

ART AND THE BRONCO


Out of the wilderness had come a painter. Genius, whose coronations
alone are democratic, had woven a chaplet of chaparral for the brow
of Lonny Briscoe. Art, whose divine expression flows impartially
from the fingertips of a cowboy or a dilettante emperor, had chosen
for a medium the Boy Artist of the San Saba. The outcome, seven feet
by twelve of besmeared canvas, stood, gilt-framed, in the lobby of
the Capitol.

The legislature was in session; the capital city of that great
Western state was enjoying the season of activity and profit that
the congregation of the solons bestowed. The boarding-houses were
corralling the easy dollars of the gamesome lawmakers. The greatest
state in the West, an empire in area and resources, had arisen and
repudiated the old libel or barbarism, lawbreaking, and bloodshed.