was gone. I was n't going to have him think I 'd backed out of the
bargain, so I says to the conductor, 'I got a job out at
Apache--cowboy--gimme a ride to Whitewater.' And he says, 'All right,
jump on. You 're welcome to a ride on my train whenever you want it.'
So I walked over from Whitewater, and I 'm ready to go to work to-night
if the boss says so. He won't find me no tenderfoot, you hear me."

The naive bravado of the child's speech was irresistible. It won my
heart as completely as I had won his, and I straightway emptied my
candy box into his hands. "Oh!" he breathed, looking at the heap of
dainties with infantile delight. And then he fell upon them with
avidity and did not speak another word until the last one had
disappeared down his throat.

So that was how the Kid came to live at Apache Teju. He said his name
was Guy Silvestre Raymond. But whether a mother's lips had really
bestowed that name upon him, or he had appropriated it to himself out
of some blood-and-thunder romance, whose hero he had decided to
imitate, name and all, is one of the things that nobody but the Kid
will ever know. But it did n't matter much anyway, for he had always
been called Kid, and that name followed him to the ranch, much to his
disgust. For he had decided, as he told me one day, that the ladies of
the household should call him Guy, and that among the men his name
should be "Broncho Bob."

He was a waif of the railroad. All his life had been spent along its
line, blacking boots, selling nuts, candy, papers, on the trains or
around the depots of the frontier cities and towns. And he had taken
care of himself ever since he could remember. He had reached Deming a
few days before in a worse but less picturesque state of dilapidation