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meat, some flour, and canned tomatoes. Going back to their horses they cooked their own meal on a camp fire.

"I've travelled far enough," said one of the hungry triumvirs. "This town looks good to me and I'm going to settle here."

Fort Sumner did not impress the other two so favourably and they climbed into their saddles and again took up the trail westward. The one who was left behind sat cross-legged on the ground and watched them disappear in the distance. Then he got to his feet, stretched himself, and started out to look for a job. He needed one. He was without a penny in the world.

He found Pete Maxwell, richest man in that part of New Mexico and owner of great herds of cattle and sheep, standing on the porch of his home.

Maxwell looked him over with a dubious smile. The visitor looked less like a cowboy than a scarecrow that had decided to quit its vigil in a cornfield and try a more exciting occupation. He was gaunt and bronzed and stood six feet four and a half inches in height. His clothes were frayed and unkempt and, because he had been unable to buy a pair of pants long enough for him, he had pieced out the ones he wore with leggings of buffalo hide, the hair on the outside. But this long-legged, scarecrow man, standing there in the road leaning on his rifle, had a merry twinkle in his eye and an ingratiating note in his drawling voice.

"I may not look exactly like a puncher just now," he went on suavely with an infectious smile, "but I'm an old hand with cows. I can do anything there is to be done around a herd of cattle; I can throw a rope as good as any man and ride anything that ever looked through a bridle."