“I’m tellin’ you what I read.  Take it or leave it,” said Clay amiably.

“Well, I read there’s a street there twelve miles long.  If a fellow started at one end of that street with a thirst he’d sure be salivated before he reached the other end of it,” Stace said with a grin.

“Wonder if a fellow could get a job there.  They wouldn’t have no use for a puncher, I reckon,” Slim drawled.

“Betcha Clay could get a job all right,” answered Johnnie Green promptly.  “He’d be top hand anywhere, Clay would.”

Johnnie was the lost dog of the B-in-a-Box ranch.  It was his nature to follow somebody and lick his hand whenever it was permitted.  The somebody he followed was Clay Lindsay.  Johnnie was his slave, the echo of his opinions, the booster of his merits.  He asked no greater happiness than to trail in the wake of his friend and get a kind word occasionally.

The Runt had chosen as his Admirable Crichton a most engaging youth.  It never had been hard for any girl to look at Clay Lindsay.  His sun-tanned, good looks, the warmth of his gay smile, the poise and the easy stride of him, made Lindsay a marked man even in a country where men of splendid physique were no exception.

“I’d take a li’l’ bet that New York ain’t lookin’ for no champeen ropers or bronco-busters,” said Stace.  “Now if Clay was a cabby-ret dancer or a Wall Street wolf—­”

“There’s no street in the world twelve miles long where Clay couldn’t run down and hogtie a job if he wanted to,” insisted Johnnie loyally.  “Ain’t that right, Clay?”

Clay was not listening.  His eyes were watching the leap of the fire glow.  The talk of New York had carried him back to a night on the round-up three years before.  He was thinking about a slim girl standing on a sand spit with a wild steer rushing toward her, of her warm, slender body lying in his arms for five immortal seconds, of her dark, shy eyes shining out of the dusk at him like live coals.  He remembered—­and it hurt him to recall it—­how his wounded pride had lashed out in resentment of the patronage of these New Yorkers.  The younger man had insulted him, but he knew in his heart now that the girl’s father had meant nothing of the kind.  Of course the girl had forgotten him long since.  If he ever came to her mind as a fugitive memory it would be in the guise of a churlish boor as impossible as his own hill cattle.

“Question is, could you land a job in New York if you wanted one,” explained Stace to the dreamer.

“If it’s neck meat or nothin’ a fellow can ‘most always get somethin’ to do,” said Lindsay in the gentle voice he used.  The vague impulses of many days crystallized suddenly into a resolution.  “Anyhow I’m goin’ to try.  Soon as the rodeo is over I’m goin’ to hit the trail for the big town.”

“Tucson?” interpreted Johnnie dubiously.

“New York.”

The bow-legged little puncher looked at his friend and gasped.  Denver was the limit of Johnnie’s imagination.  New York was terra incognita, inhabited by a species who were as foreign to him as if they had dwelt in Mars.