After much effort Endicott succeeded in smearing his face with a thin, stringy lather, and gingerly picked up the razor.  The Texan looked on in owlish solemnity as the man sat holding the blade helplessly.

“What you doin’, Win, sayin’ the blessin’?  Just whet her on your boot an’ sail in.”

“But where do I begin?”

The Texan snorted disgustedly.  “Your face ain’t so damn big but what an hour or two reminiscence ought to take you back to where it starts.  Begin at your hat an’ work down over your jaw ’til you come to your shirt, an’ the same on the other side, takin’ in your lip an’ chin in transit, as the feller says.  An’ hold it like a razor, an’ not like a pitchfork.  Now you got to lather all over again, ’cause it’s dry.”

Once more Endicott laboriously coaxed a thin lather out of the brown hand-soap, and again he grasped the razor, this time with a do-or-die determination.

“Oughtn’t I have a mirror?” he asked doubtfully.

“A mirror!  Don’t you know where your own face is at?  You don’t need no mirror to eat with, do you?  Well, it’s the same way with shavin’.  But if you got to have ocular evidence, just hang out over the creek there where it’s still.”

The operation was slow and painful.  It seemed to Endicott as though each separate hair were being dragged out by its roots, and more than once the razor edge drew blood.  At last the job was finished, he bathed his smarting face in the cold water, and turned to the Texan for approval.

“You look like the second best bet in a two-handed cat fight,” he opined, and producing his book of cigarette papers, proceeded to stick patches of tissue over various cuts and gashes.  “Takin’ it by an’ large, though, it ain’t so bad.  There’s about as many places where you didn’t go close enough as there is where you went too close, so’s it’ll average somewhere around the skin level.  Anyway it shows you tried to look respectable—­an’ you do, from your neck down—­an’ your hat, too.”

“I am certainly obliged to you,” laughed Endicott, “for going to all that trouble to provide me with clothing.  And by the way, did you learn anything—­in regard to posses, I mean?”

The Texan nodded sombrely:  “Yep.  I did.  This here friend of mine was on his way back from Wolf River when I met up with him.  ‘Tex,’ he says, ‘where’s the pilgrim?’ I remains noncommital, an’ he continues, ’I layed over yesterday to enjoy Purdy’s funeral, which it was the biggest one ever pulled off in Wolf River—­not that any one give a damn about Purdy, but they’ve drug politics into it, an’ furthermore, his’n was the only corpse to show for the whole celebration, it bein’ plumb devoid of further casualties.’” The cowpuncher paused, referred to his bottle, and continued:  “It’s just like I told you before.  There can’t no one’s election get predjudiced by hangin’ you, an’ they’ve made a kind of issue out of it.