On a March afternoon the lobby dashed, with a whoop, into town. The
cowpunchers had adjusted their garb suitably from that prescribed
for the range to the more conventional requirements of town. They
had conceded their leather chaparreras and transferred their
six-shooters and belts from their persons to the horns of their
saddles. Among them rode Lonny, a youth of twenty-three, brown,
solemn-faced, ingenuous, bowlegged, reticent, bestriding Hot
Tamales, the most sagacious cow pony west of the Mississippi.
Senator Mullens had informed him of the bright prospects of the
situation; had even mentioned--so great was his confidence in the
capable Kinney--the price that the state would, in all likelihood,
pay. It seemed to Lonny that fame and fortune were in his hands.
Certainly, a spark of the divine fire was in the little brown
centaur's breast, for he was counting the two thousand dollars as
but a means to future development of his talent. Some day he would
paint a picture even greater than this--one, say, twelve feet by
twenty, full of scope and atmosphere and action.

During the three days that yet intervened before the coming of the
date fixed for the introduction of the bill, the centaur lobby
did valiant service. Coatless, spurred, weather-tanned, full of
enthusiasm expressed in bizarre terms, they loafed in front of
the painting with tireless zeal. Reasoning not unshrewdly, they
estimated that their comments upon its fidelity to nature would be
received as expert evidence. Loudly they praised the skill of the
painter whenever there were ears near to which such evidence might
be profitably addressed. Lem Perry, the leader of the claque, had a
somewhat set speech, being uninventive in the construction of new
phrases.