“Hello, Mr. Ellison,” called Sam cheerfully.  “Thought I’d drop over and see you a while.  Notice you’ve had fine rains on your range.  They ought to make good grazing for your spring lambs.”

“Well, well, well,” said old man Ellison.  “I’m mighty glad to see you, Sam.  I never thought you’d take the trouble to ride over to as out-of-the-way an old ranch as this.  But you’re mighty welcome.  ’Light.  I’ve got a sack of new oats in the kitchen—­shall I bring out a feed for your hoss?”

“Oats for him?” said Sam, derisively.  “No, sir-ee.  He’s as fat as a pig now on grass.  He don’t get rode enough to keep him in condition.  I’ll just turn him in the horse pasture with a drag rope on if you don’t mind.”

I am positive that never during the eleventh and thirteenth centuries did Baron, Troubadour, and Worker amalgamate as harmoniously as their parallels did that evening at old man Ellison’s sheep ranch.  The Kiowa’s biscuits were light and tasty and his coffee strong.  Ineradicable hospitality and appreciation glowed on old man Ellison’s weather-tanned face.  As for the troubadour, he said to himself that he had stumbled upon pleasant places indeed.  A well-cooked, abundant meal, a host whom his lightest attempt to entertain seemed to delight far beyond the merits of the exertion, and the reposeful atmosphere that his sensitive soul at that time craved united to confer upon him a satisfaction and luxurious ease that he had seldom found on his tours of the ranches.

After the delectable supper, Sam untied the green duck bag and took out his guitar.  Not by way of payment, mind you—­neither Sam Galloway nor any other of the true troubadours are lineal descendants of the late Tommy Tucker.  You have read of Tommy Tucker in the works of the esteemed but often obscure Mother Goose.  Tommy Tucker sang for his supper.  No true troubadour would do that.  He would have his supper, and then sing for Art’s sake.

Sam Galloway’s repertoire comprised about fifty funny stories and between thirty and forty songs.  He by no means stopped there.  He could talk through twenty cigarettes on any topic that you brought up.  And he never sat up when he could lie down; and never stood when he could sit.  I am strongly disposed to linger with him, for I am drawing a portrait as well as a blunt pencil and a tattered thesaurus will allow.

I wish you could have seen him:  he was small and tough and inactive beyond the power of imagination to conceive.  He wore an ultramarine-blue woollen shirt laced down the front with a pearl-gray, exaggerated sort of shoestring, indestructible brown duck clothes, inevitable high-heeled boots with Mexican spurs, and a Mexican straw sombrero.

That evening Sam and old man Ellison dragged their chairs out under the hackberry trees.  They lighted cigarettes; and the troubadour gaily touched his guitar.  Many of the songs he sang were the weird, melancholy, minor-keyed canciones that he had learned from the Mexican sheep herders and vaqueros.  One, in particular, charmed and soothed the soul of the lonely baron.  It was a favourite song of the sheep herders, beginning:  “Huile, huile, palomita,” which being translated means, “Fly, fly, little dove.”  Sam sang it for old man Ellison many times that evening.