Several of the men grinned, and Sundown, eager to be friendly, grinned in return.

“Mebby you could hold it down,” continued the cowboy.  “But say, do you eat your own cookin’?”

“Guess you’re joshin’ me.”  And the tramp’s face expressed disappointment.  “I eat my own cookin’ when I can’t get any better,” he added, cheerfully.

“Well, it ain’t no joke—­cookin’ for that hotel,” stated the puncher, gazing at the end of his cigar and shaking his head.  “Is it, boys?”

“Sure ain’t,” they chorused.

“A man’s got to shoot the good chuck to hold the trade,” he continued.

“Hotel?” queried Sundown.  “In this here town?”

“Naw!” exclaimed the puncher.  “It’s one o’ them swell joints out in the desert.  Kind o’ what folks East calls a waterin’-place.  Eh, boys?”

“That’s her!” volleyed the group.

“Kind o’ select-like,” continued the puncher.

“Sure is!” they chorused.

“Do you know what the job pays?” asked Sundown.

“U-m-m-m, let’s see.  Don’t know as I ever heard.  But there’ll be no trouble about the pay.  And you’ll have things your own way, if you can deliver the goods.”

“That’s right!” concurred a listener.

Sundown looked upon work of any kind too seriously to suspect that it could be a subject for jest.  He gazed hopefully at their hard, keen faces.  They all seemed interested, even eager that he should find work.  “Well, if it’s a job I can hold down,” he said, slowly, “I’ll start for her right now.  I ain’t afraid to work when I got to.”

“That’s the talk, pardner!  Well, I’ll tell you.  You take that road at the end of the station and follow her south right plumb over the hill.  Over the hill you’ll see a ranch, ‘way on.  Keep right on fannin’ it and you’ll come to a sign that reads ‘American Hotel.’  That’s her.  Good water, fine scenery, quiet-like, and just the kind of a place them tourists is always lookin’ for.  I stopped there many a time.  So has the rest of the boys.”

“You was tellin’ me it was select-like—­” ventured Sundown.

The men roared.  Even Sundown’s informant relaxed and grinned.  But he became grave again, flicked the ashes from his cigar and waved his hand.  “It’s this way, pardner.  That there hotel is run on the American style; if you got the price, you can have anything in the house.  And tourists kind o’ like to see a bunch of punchers settin’ ‘round smokin’ and talkin’ and tellin’ yarns.  Why, they was a lady onct—­”

“But she went back East,” interrupted a listener.

“That’s the way with them,” said the cowboy.  “They’re always stickin’ their irons on some other fella’s stock.  Don’t you pay no ’tention to them.”