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When was he coming back? Well, now, that was a question; he hadn’t got started yet, man. What he was figuring on wasn’t the coming back part, but the getting started.

The schoolma’am? Oh, he guessed she could get along without him, all right. Seeing they mentioned her, would some of them tell her hello for him–and so long?

This last was at the station, where they had ridden in a body to see him off. Weary waved his hat as long as the town was in sight, and the Happy Family ran their horses to keep pace with the train when it pulled out, emptied their six-shooters into the air and yelled parting words till the Pullman windows were filled with shocked, Eastern faces, eager to see a real, wild cowboy on his native soil.

Then Weary went into the smoker, sought a place where he could stretch the long legs of him over two seats, made him a cigarette and forgot to smoke it while he watched the gray plains slide away behind him; till something went wrong with his eyes. It was just four o’clock, and school was out. The schoolma’am was looking down the trail, maybe– At any rate she was a good many miles away from him now–so many that even if he got off and had Glory right there and ran him every foot of the way, he could not possibly get to her–and the way the train was galloping over the rails, she was every minute getting farther off, and– What a damn fool a man can make of himself, rushing off like that when, maybe–

After that, a fellow who traveled for a San Francisco wine house spoke to him pleasantly and Weary thrust vain longings from him and was himself again.

For two months he wandered aimlessly and, then, not quite at the point of going back and not being rich or an idler by nature, he started out, one gloomy morning in late November, looking for work. He was in Portland and the city was strange to him, for he had dropped off a north-bound train the night before.

People hurried past without a glance in his direction, and even after two months this made him lonesome, coming as he did from a place where every man hailed him jovially by his adopted name.

There was little that he could do–or would do. He tried digging ditches for the city, along with a motley collection of the sons of all nations but his, seemingly.

The first day be blistered both hands and got a “crick” in his back.

The second day, he quit.

On the third day, he brought up at the door of a livery stable. A man with a slate-colored, silk waistcoat was standing aggressively in the doorway, one hand deep in his pocket and the other energetically punctuating the remarks he was making to a droop-shouldered hostler. Some of the remarks were interesting in the extreme and Weary, listening, drew a deep sigh of thankfulness that they were not directed at himself, because his back was still lame and his hands sore, and in Portland law-abiding citizens are not supposed to “pack” a gun.

The droop-shouldered man waited humbly for the climax–which reached so high a tension that the speaker rose upon his toes to deliver it, and drew his right hand from his pocket to aid in the punctuation–when he pulled his hat down on his head and slunk away.

It was while the orator was gazing contemptuously after him that he heard Weary cheerfully asking for work. For Weary was a straight guesser; he knew when he stood in the presence of the Great and Only. The man wheeled and measured Weary slowly with his eyes–and there being a good deal of Weary if you measured lengthwise, he consumed several seconds doing it.

“Humph!” when the survey was over. “What do you know about horses?” His tone was colored still by the oration he had just delivered, and it was not encouraging.