classy-like. I'm feeling them kind of thanks, but I can't say 'em."

The grins faded from some of the faces. "You ain't goin' to fan it to-night?" asked one.

"Guess I will. You see, I'm broke, now. I'm used to travelin' any old time, and nights ain't bad—believe me. It's mighty hot daytimes in this here country. How far did you say?"

"Just over the hill—then a piece down the trail. You can't miss it," said the cowboy who had spoken first.

"Well, so-long, gents. If I get that job and any of you boys come out to the hotel, I'll sure feed you good."

An eddy of smoke followed Sundown as he passed through the doorway. A cowboy snickered. The room became silent.

"Call the poor ramblin' lightnin'-rod back," suggested a kindly puncher.

"He'll come back fast enough," asserted the perpetrator of the "joke." "It's thirty dry and dusty miles to the water-hole ranch. When he gets a look at how far it is to-morrow mornin' he'll sure back into the fence and come flyin' for Antelope with reins draggin'. Set 'em up again, Joe."

CHAPTER II

THE JOKE

Owing to his unaccustomed potations Sundown was perhaps a trifle over-zealous in taking the road at night. He began to realize this after he had journeyed along the dim, starlit trail for an hour or so and found no break in the level monotony of the mesa. He peered ahead, hoping to see the blur of a hill against the southern stars. The air was cool and clear and sweet. He plodded along, happy in the prospect of work. Although he was a physical coward, darkness and the solitudes held no enemies for him. He felt that the world belonged to him at night. The moon was his lantern and the stars were his friends. Circumstance and environment had wrought for him a coat of cheerful effrontery which passed for hardihood; a coat patched with slang and gaping with inconsistencies, which he put on or off at will. Out on the starlit mesas he had metaphorically shed his coat. He was at home. Here there were no men to joke about his awkwardness and his ungainly height. A wanderer by nature, he looked upon space as his kingdom. Great distances were but the highways of his heritage, each promising new vistas, new adventuring. His wayside fires were his altars, their smoke the incense to his gods. A true adventurer, albeit timid, he journeyed not knowing why, but rather because he knew no reason for not journeying. Wrapped in his vague imaginings he swung along, peering ahead from time to time until at last he saw upon the far background of the night a darker something shaped like a tiny mound. "That's her!" he exclaimed, joyously, and quickened his pace. "But Gee Gosh! I guess them fellas forgot I was afoot. That hill looks turruble far off. Mebby because it's dark." The distant hill seemed to keep pace ahead of him, sliding away into the southern night as he advanced. Having that stubbornness so frequently associated with timidity, he plodded on, determined to top the hill before morning. "Them fellas as rides don't know how far things are," he commented. "But, anyhow, the folks at that hotel will sure know I want the job, walkin' all night for it."

Gradually the outline of the hill became bolder. Sundown estimated that he had been traveling several hours, when the going stiffened to a slow grade. Presently the grade became steep and rocky. Thus far the road had led straight south. Now it swung to the west and skirted the base of the hill in a gradual ascent. Then it swung back again following a fairly easy slope to the top. His optimism waned as he saw no light ahead. The night grew colder. The stars flickered as the wind of the dawn, whispering over the grasses, touched his face. He paused for a moment on the crest of the hill, turned to look back, and then started down the slope. It was steep and rutted. He had not gone far when he stumbled and fell. His blanket-roll had pitched ahead of him. He fumbled about for it and finally found it. "Them as believes in signs would say it was about time to go to roost," he remarked, nursing his knee that had been cut on a fragment of ragged tufa. A coyote wailed. Sundown started up. "Some lonesome. But she sure is one grand old night! Guess I'll turn in."

He rolled in his blankets. Hardly had he adjusted his length of limb to the unevenness of the ground when he fell asleep. He had come twenty-five miles across the midnight mesas. Five miles below him was his destination, shrouded by the night, but visioned in his dreams as a palatial summer resort, aglow with lights and eagerly awaiting the coming of the new cook.

The dawn, edging its slow way across the mesas, struck palely on the hillside where he slept. A rabbit, huddled beneath a scrub-cedar, hopped to the middle of the road and sat up, staring with moveless eyes at the motionless hump of blanket near the road. In a flash the wide mesas were tinged with gold as the smouldering red sun rose, to march unclouded to the western sea.

Midway between the town of Antelope and the river Concho is the water-hole. The land immediately surrounding the water-hole is enclosed with a barb-wire fence. Within the enclosure is a ranch-house painted white, a scrub-cedar corral, a small stable, and a lean-to shading the water-hole from the desert sun. The place is altogether neat and habitable. It is rather a surprise to the chance wayfarer to find the ranch uninhabited. As desolate as a stranded steamer on a mud bank, it stands in the center of several hundred acres of desert, incapable, without irrigation, of producing anything more edible than lizards and horned toads. Why a homesteader should have chosen to locate there is a mystery. His reason for abandoning the place is glaringly obvious. Though failure be written in every angle and nook of the homestead, it is the failure of large-hearted enterprise, of daring to attempt, of striving to make the desert bloom, and not the failure of indolence or sloth.

Western humor like Western topography is apt to be more or less rugged. Between the high gateposts of the yard enclosure there is a great, twelve-foot sign lettered in black. It reads: "American Hotel." A band of happy cowboys appropriated the sign when on a visit to Antelope, pressed a Mexican freighter to pack it thirty miles across the desert, and nailed it above the gateway of the water-hole ranch. It is a standing joke among the cattle- and sheep-men of the Concho Valley.

Sundown sat up and gazed about. The rabbit, startled out of its ordinary resourcefulness, stiffened. The delicate nostrils ceased twitching. "Good mornin', little fella! You been travelin' all night too?" And Sundown yawned and stretched. Down the road sped a brown exclamation mark with a white dot at its visible end. "Guess he don't have to travel nights to get 'most anywhere," laughed Sundown. He kicked back his blankets and rose stiffly. The luxury of his yawn was stifled as he saw below him the ranchhouse with some strange kind of a sign above its gate. "If that's the hotel," he said as he corded his blankets, "she don't look much bigger than me own. But distances is mighty deceivin' in this here open-face country." For a moment he stood on the hillside, a gaunt, lonely figure, gazing out across the limitless mesas. Then he jogged down the grade, whistling.

As he drew near the ranch his whistling ceased and his expression changed to one of quizzical uncertainty. "That's the sign, all right,—'American Hotel,'—but the hotel part ain't livin' up to the sign. But some hotels is like that; mostly front."

He opened the ranch-house gate and strode to the door. He knocked timidly. Then he dropped his blanket-roll and stepped to a window. Through the grimy glass he saw an empty, board-walled room, a slant of sunlight across the floor, and in the sunlight a rusted stove. He walked back to the gateway and stood gazing at the sign. He peered round helplessly. Then a slow grin illumined his face. "Why," he exclaimed, "it's—it's a