“Me?  Fine!  Reckon I’ll take out me papers for a full-chested range cook afore long.  You see the L.D. outfit says that I could have a job with them after the round-up.  It kind of leaked out about them pies.  ‘Course they was joshin’, mebby.  I dunno.”

“The L.D. boys are all right,” said Corliss.  “If you want to make a change—­”

“See here, boss!  I done some ramblin’ in my time.  Guess because I was lookin’ for somethin’ new and excitin’.  Well, I reckon they’s plenty new and excitin’ right to home on the Concho.  Any time I get tired of fallin’ off hosses, and gettin’ beat up, and mixin’ up in dog and wolf fights, why, I can go to bustin’ broncos to keep me from goin’ to sleep.  Then Chance there, he needs lookin’ after.”

Corliss seemingly ignored the gentle hint.  He mounted and called to the dog.  Chance made no movement to follow him.  Corliss frowned.  “Here, Chance!” he commanded, slapping his thigh with his gauntleted hand.  The dog followed at the horse’s heels as Corliss rode across the hard-packed circle around the camp.  Sundown’s throat tightened.  His pal was gone.

He puttered about, straightening the blankets.  “Gee Gosh! but this here shack looks empty!  Never knowed sick folks could be so much comp’ny.  And Chance is folks, all right.  Talk about blue blood!  Huh!  I reckon a thoroughbred dog is prouder than common folks, like me.  Some king, he was!  Layin’ there lookin’ out at them punchers and his eyes sad-like and proud, and turnin’ his head slow, watchin’ ’em like they was workin’ for him.  They’s somethin’ about class that gets a fella, even in a dog.  And most folks knows it, but won’t let on.”

He took Chance’s drinking-basin—­a bread-pan appropriated from the outfit—­and the frayed saddle-blanket that had been the dog’s bed, and carried them to the cottonwoods edging the river.  There he hid the things.  He returned to the lean-to and threw himself on his blankets.  He felt as though he had just buried a friend.  A cowboy strolled up and squatted in front of the lean-to.  He gazed at the interior, nodded to Sundown, and rolled a cigarette.  He smoked for a while, glanced up at the sky, peered round the camp, and shrugged his shoulders.

Sundown nodded.  “You said it all, Joe.  He’s gone.”

The cowboy blew rings of smoke, watching them spread and dissolve in the evening air.  “Had a hoss onct,” he began slowly,—­“ornery, glass-eyed, she-colt that got mixed up in a bob-wire fence.  Seein’ as she was like to make the buzzards happy ’most any day, I took to nussin’ her.  Me, Joe Scott, eh?  And a laugh comin’.  Well, the boys joshed—­mebby you hearn some of ’em call me Doc.  That’s why.  The boys joshed and went around like they was in a horsepital, quiet and steppin’ catty.  I could write a book out of them joshin’s and sell her, if I could write her with a brandin’-iron or a rope.  Anyhow, the colt she gets well and