“Cheyenne is a kind of hobo puncher that rides the country with his little old pack-horse, stoppin’ by to work for a grubstake when he has to, but ramblin’ most of the time.  He used to be a top-hand once.  Worked for me a spell.  But he can’t stay in one place long.  Wish you could meet him sometime.  He can tell you more about this State than any man I know.  He’s what you might call a character for a story.  He stops by regular, at the ranch, mebby for a day or two, and then takes the trail, singin’ his little old song.  He’s kind of a outdoor poet.  Makes up his own songs.”

“What was that one about Arizona that you gave ’em over to the State House onct?” queried Lon Pelly.

“Oh, that wa’n’t Cheyenne’s own po’try.  It was one he read in a magazine that he gave me.  Let’s see—­

    “Arizona!  The tramp of cattle,
      The biting dust and the raw, red brand: 
    Shuffling sheep and the smoke of battle: 
      The upturned face—­and the empty hand.

    “Dawn and dusk, and the wide world singing,
      Songs that thrilled with the pulse of life,
    As we clattered down with our rein chains ringing
      To woo you—­but never to make you wife.”

The Senator smiled a trifle apologetically.  “There’s more of it.  But po’try ain’t just in my line.  Once in a while I bust loose on po’try—­that is, my kind of po’try.  And I want to say that we sure clattered down from the Butte and the Blue in the old days, with our rein chains jinglin’, thinkin’—­some of us—­that Arizona was ours to fare-ye-well.

“But we old-timers lived to find out that Arizona was too young to get married yet; so we just had to set back and kind of admire her, after havin’ courted her an amazin’ lot, in our young days.”  The Senator chuckled.  “Now, Lon, here, he’ll tell you that there ain’t no po’try in this here country.  And I never knew they was till I got time to set back and think over what we unbranded yearlin’s used to do.”

“For instance?” queried Bartley.

Senator Steve waved his pudgy hand as though shooing a flock of chickens off a front lawn.  “If I was to tell you some of the things that happened, you would think I was a heap sight bigger liar than I am.  Seein’ some of them yarns in print, folks around this country would say:  ’Steve Brown’s corralled some tenderfoot and loaded him to the muzzle with shin tangle and ancient history!’ Things that would seem amazin’ to you would never ruffle the hair of the mavericks that helped make this country.”

“This country ain’t all settled yet,” said the foreman, rising.  “Reckon I’ll step along, Steve.”

After the foreman had departed, Bartley turned to the Senator.  “Are there many more like him, out here?”

“Who, Lon?  Well, a few.  He’s been foreman for me quite a spell.  Lon he thinks.  And that’s more than I ever did till after I was thirty.  And Lon ain’t twenty-six, yet.”