"Gosh!" Pinkey lamented, as they stood outside clutching their quilts, "I wisht I knowed whur to locate them mackinaws. I got 'em in Lethbridge before I went to the army, and I think the world of 'em. I don't like 'poor-boys-serge,' but I guess I'll have to come to it, since I'm busted."

"What's that?" Wallie asked, curiously.

"Denim," Pinkey explained, "overalls. That makes me think of a song a feller wrote up:

"A Texas boy in a Northern clime, With a pair of brown hands and a thin little dime.

The southeast side of his overalls out-- _Yip-yip, I'm freezin' to death_!"

"That's a swell song," Pinkey went on enthusiastically. "I wish I could think of the rest of it."

"Don't overtax your brain--I've heard plenty. Let's cut down the alley and in the back way of the Emporium. Oh!" He gripped his quilt in sudden panic and looked for a hiding-place. Nothing better than a telegraph pole offered. He stepped behind it as Helene Spenceley pa.s.sed in Canby's roadster.

"Did she see me?"

"Sh.o.r.e she saw you. You'd oughta seen the way she looked at you."

Wallie, who was too mortified and miserable for words over the incident, declared he meant never again to come to town and make a fool of himself.

"I know how you feel, but you'll git over it," said Pinkey, sympathetically. "It's nothin' to worry about, for I doubt if you ever had any show anyhow."

Canby laughed disagreeably after they had pa.s.sed the two on the sidewalk.

"That Montgomery-Ward cowpuncher has been drunk again, evidently," he commented.

"I wouldn't call him that. I'm told he can rope and ride with any of them."

He looked at her quickly.

"You seem to keep track of him."

She replied bluntly:

"He interests me."

"Why?" curtly. Canby looked malicious as he added: "He's a fizzle."

"He'll get his second wind some day and surprise you."

"He will?" Canby replied, curtly. "What makes you think it?"

"His aunt is a rich woman, and he could go limping back if he wanted to; besides, he has what I call the 'makings'."

"He should feel flattered by your confidence in him," he answered, uncomfortably.

"He doesn't know it."

Canby said no more, but it pa.s.sed through his mind that Wallie would not, either, if there was a way for him to prevent it.

CHAPTER XV

COLLECTING A BAD DEBT

Wallie and Pinkey picked up a few stray cattle on their way to the homestead on Skull Creek. It was late in the afternoon when they reached it, so they decided to spend the night there. The corral was down in places, but with a little work it was repaired sufficiently to hold the cattle they put in it.

As Pinkey had prophesied, it gave Wallie the "blues" to look at the place where he had worked so hard and from which he had hoped so much.

He felt heartsick as he saw the broken fence-posts and tangled wire, the weeds growing in his wheat-field, the broken window-panes, and the wreckage inside his cabin.

The door had been left open and the range stock had gone in for shelter, while the rats and mice and chipmunks had taken possession. Such of his cooking utensils as remained had been used and left unwashed, and the stove was partially demolished.

The only thing which remained as he had left it was the stream of salt water that had cut a deeper channel for itself but had not diminished in volume.

"I'll go over to Canby's and hit the cook for some grub and be back p.r.o.nto," said Pinkey.

Wallie nodded. He was in no mood for conversation, for the realization of his failure was strong upon him, and he could not rid himself of the mortification he felt at having made a spectacle of himself before Helene Spenceley.

The future looked utterly hopeless. Without capital there seemed nothing to do but go on indefinitely working for wages. His aunt had sent word in a roundabout way that if he wished to come back she would receive him, but this he did not even consider.

Sitting on what was left of his doorstep, he awaited Pinkey's return, in an att.i.tude of such dejection that that person commented upon it jocosely. He rode up finally with a banana in each hip pocket that he had pilfered from the cook, together with four doughnuts in the crown of his hat and a cake in his shirt front.

"I tried to get away with a pie, but it was too soft to carry, so I put a handful of salt under the crust and set it back," he said, as he disgorged his plunder. "He charged me for the bread and meat, and wouldn't let me have no b.u.t.ter! It's fellers like the Canby outfit that spoil a country."

When they had eaten, they spread their saddle-blankets in the dooryard and with their saddles for pillows covered themselves with the slickers they carried and so slept soundly until morning.

After breakfast, as they were leading their horses up the weed-grown path to the cabin to saddle them, Pinkey's eye rested on the flowing salt water stream.

"Can you beat it!" he commented. "Good for nuthin' but a bathin' pool fer dudes----"

Wallie stopped in the path and looked at the friend of his bosom.

"Pink," he said, solemnly, "why wouldn't this make a dude ranch?"

Pinkey stared back at him.

"Gentle Annie," he replied, finally, "I told you long ago you was good fer somethin' if we could jest hit on it. You're a born duder!"

"Thanks! I feel as complimented as the fellow in the Pa.s.sion Play who is cast for Judas Iscariot."

"I don't know what you're talkin' about--I've only seen a few draymas--but you got the looks and the figger and a way about you that I've noticed takes with women. You'd make a great dude wrangler. Bleeve me, you've thought of somethin'!"

"I wasn't thinking of myself, but of the place here--the scenery--the climate--fishing in the mountains--hunting in season----"

"_And_"--Pinkey interrupted--"the strongest stream of salt water in the state fer mineral baths, with the Yellowstone Park in your front dooryard!"

In his enthusiasm he pounded Wallie on the back.