"Oh, and can I go?" Buddy's voice was shrill with eagerness.

"I'll need you, lad, to look after the horses. It will give
me one more hand with the cattle. Now go tell Step-and-a-Half
to make ready for a week on the trail, and to have supper
early so he can make his start with the rest."

Buddy walked stiffly away to the cook's cabin where Step-and-
a-Half sat leisurely gouging the worst blemishes out of soft,
old potatoes with a chronic tendency to grow sprouts, before
he peeled them for supper His crippled leg was thrust out
straight, his hat was perched precariously over one ear
because of the slanting sun rays through the window, and a
half-smoked cigarette waggled uncertainly in the corner of
his mouth while he sang dolefully a most optimistic ditty of
the West:

"O give me a home where the buff-alo roam,
Where the deer and the antelope play,
Where never is heard a discouraging
word And the sky is not cloudy all day."

"You're going to hear a discouraging word right now," Buddy
broke in ruthlessly upon the song. Whereupon, with a bit of
importance in his voice and in his manner, he proceeded to
spoil Step-and-a-Half's disposition and to deepen, if that
were possible, his loathing of Indians. Too often had he made
dubious soup of his dishwater and the leavings from a roundup
crew's dinner, and watched blanketed bucks smack lips over
the mess, to run from them now without feeling utterly