“I’ve been to necktie-parties myself.”  Pink brightened visibly.  “I don’t like them; you always get the wrong girl.”

“I don’t like ’em, either,” agreed Cal.  “I’m always afraid the wrong necktie will be mine.  Were you ever lynched?”

Pink moved uneasily.  “I—­I don’t remember that I ever was,” he answered guardedly.

“I was.  My gang come along and cut me down just as I was about all in.  I was leading a gang——­”

“Excuse me a minute,” Pink interrupted hurriedly.  “I think the overseer is motioning for me.”

He hastened over to where Chip was standing alone, and asked if he should change his clothes and get ready to go to work.

Chip told him it wouldn’t be a bad idea, and Pink, carrying his haughty suit-case and another bulky bundle, disappeared precipitately into the bed-tent.

“By golly!” spoke up Slim, “it looks good enough to eat.”

“Where did yuh pluck that modest flower, Chip?” Jack Bates wanted to know.

Chip calmly sifted some tobacco in a paper.  “I picked it in town,” he told them.  “I hired it to punch cows, and its name is—­wait a minute.”  He put away the tobacco sack, got out his book, and turned the leaves.  “Its name is Percival Cadwallader Perkins.”

“Oh, mamma!  Percival Cadwolloper—­what?” Weary looked utterly at sea.

“Perkins,” supplied Chip.

“Percival—­Cad-wolloper—­Perkins,” Weary mused aloud.  “Yuh want to double the guard to-night, Chip; that name’ll sure stampede the bunch.”

“He’s sure a sweet young thing—­mamma’s precious lamb broke out uh the home corral!” said Jack Bates.  “I’ll bet yuh a tall, yellow-haired mamma with flowing widow’s weeds’ll be out here hunting him up inside a week.  We got to be gentle with him, and not rub none uh the bloom uh innocence off his rosy cheek.  Mamma had a little lamb, his cheeks were red and rosy.  And everywhere that mamma went—­er—­everywhere—­that mamma—­went——­”

“The lamb was sure to mosey,” supplied Weary.

“By golly! yuh got that backward,” Slim objected.  “It ought uh be:  Everywhere the lambie went; his mamma was sure to mosey.”

The reappearance of Pink cut short the discussion.  Pink as he had looked before was pretty as a poster.  Pink as he reappeared would have driven a matinee crowd wild with enthusiasm.  On the stage he would be in danger of being Hobsonized; in the Flying U camp the Happy Family looked at him and drew a long breath.  When his back was turned, they shaded their eyes ostentatiously from the blaze of his splendor.

He still wore his panama, and the dainty pink-and-white striped silk shirt, the gray trousers, and russet-leather belt with silver buckle.  But around his neck, nestling under his rounded chin, was a gorgeous rose-pink silk handkerchief, of the hue that he always wore, and that had given him the nickname of “Pink.”

His white hands were hidden in a pair of wonderful silk-embroidered buckskin gauntlets.  His gray trousers were tucked into number four tan riding-boots, high as to heel—­so high that they looked two sizes smaller—­and gorgeous as to silk-stitched tops.  A shiny, new pair of silver-mounted spurs jingled from his heels.