in the west it awoke with a clamor which might have been laid to the
efforts of a zealous Satan. At this time it became the Mecca of two
score or more joyous cowboys from the neighboring ranches, who livened
things as those knights of the saddle could.

In the scant but heavy shadow of Cowan's saloon sat a picturesque
figure from whom came guttural, resonant rumblings which mingled in a
spirit of loneliness with the fretful sighs of a flea-tormented dog.
Both dog and master were vagrants, and they were tolerated because it
was a matter of supreme indifference as to who came or how long they
stayed as long as the ethics and the unwritten law of the cow country
were inviolate. And the breaking of these caused no unnecessary
anxiety, for justice was both speedy and sure.

When the outcast Sioux and his yellow dog had drifted into town some
few months before they had caused neither expostulation nor inquiry,
as the cardinal virtue of that whole broad land was to ask a man no
questions which might prove embarrassing to all concerned; judgment
was of observation, not of history, and a man's past would reveal
itself through actions. It mattered little whether he was an embezzler
or the wild chip from some prosperous eastern block, as men came to
the range to forget and to lose touch with the pampered East; and the
range absorbed them as its own.



A man was only a man as his skin contained the qualities necessary; and the
illiterate who could ride
and shoot and live to himself was far more esteemed than the educated
who could not do those things. The more a man depends upon himself and