He smiled trustfully at Chip, and leaned, with the studiously graceful pose of the stage, against a hind wheel of the mess-wagon.  Then he got papers and tobacco from a pocket of the silk shirt and began to roll a cigarette.  Inwardly he hoped that the act would not give him away to the Happy Family, whom he felt in honor bound to deceive, and bewailed the smoke-hunger that drove him to take the risk.

The Happy Family, however, was unsuspicious.  His pink-and-white prettiness, his clothes, and the baby innocence of his dimples and his long-lashed blue eyes branded him unequivocally in their eyes as the tenderest sort of tenderfoot.

“Get onto the way he rolls ’em—­backward!” murmured Weary into Cal’s ear.

“If there’s anything I hate,” Cal remarked irrelevantly to the crowd, “it’s to see a girl chewing a tutti-frutti cud—­or smoking a cigarette!”

Pink looked up from under his thick lashes and opened his lips to speak, then thought better of it.  The jingling of the cavvy coming in cut short the incipient banter, and Pink turned and watched intently the corralling process.  To him the jangling bells were sweetest music, for which ears and heart had hungered long, and which had come to him often in dreams.  His blood tingled as might a lover’s when his sweetheart approaches.

“Weary, you and Cal better relieve the boys on herd,” Chip called.  “I’ll get you a horse, P—­Perkins”—­he had almost said “Pink”—­“and you can go along.  Then to-night you’ll go on guard with Cal.”

“Yes, sir,” said Pink, with a docility that would have amazed any who knew him well, and followed Chip out to the corral, where Cal and Weary were already inside with their ropes, among the circling mass.

Chip led out a gentle little cow-pony that could almost day-herd without a rider of any sort, and Pink bridled him before the covertly watching crew.  He did not do it as quickly as he might have done, for he “played to the gallery” and deliberately fumbled the buckle and pinned one ear of the pony down flat with the head-stall.

A new saddle, stiff and unbroken, is ever a vexation unto its proud owner, and its proper adjustment requires time and much language.  Pink omitted the language, so that the process took longer than it would naturally have done; but Cal and Weary, upon their mounts, made cigarettes and waited, with an air of endurance, and gave Pink much advice.  Then he got somehow into the saddle and flapped elbows beside them, looking like a gorgeous-hued canary with wings a-flutter.

Happy Jack, who had been standing herd disconsolately with two aliens, stared open-mouthed at Pink’s approach and rode hastily to camp, fair bursting with questions and comments.

The herd, twelve hundred range-fattened steers, grazed quietly on a side hill half a mile or more from camp.  Pink ran a quick, appraising eye over the bunch estimating correctly the number, and noting their splendid condition.