"He's got one more guess comin'. There ain't no sympathies to machinery. Your intentions may be strictly honorable, but if you get your hand caught in the cogs, off it goes, regardless of how handy it is for flankin' calves, holdin' nails, and such things. 'Absent over six months. Entry canceled. Contestant is allowed thirty days' prior right to file. Next.' "That's the way that decision'll read. It ain't come yet, but it's due soon. "This here Felix looks at it just like the old man, only different--though he ain't makin' no statements for publication. He come here young, and having acquired the fixed habit of riskin' his neck, regular, for one dollar per each and every diem, shooin' in the reluctant steer, or a fool hawse pirouettin' across the pinnacles with a nosebag on--or, mebbee, just for fun--why, natural, he don't see why life is so sweet or peace so dear as to put up with any damn foolishness, as Pat Henry used to say when the boys called on him for a few remarks. He's a some serious-minded boy, that night-hawk, and if signs is any indications, he's fixin' to take an appeal under the Winchester Act. I ain't no seventh son of a son-of-a-gun, but my prognostications are that he presently removes Lake to another and, we trust, a better world." "Good thing, too," grunted Headlight. "This Lake person is sure-lee a muddy pool." "Shet your fool head," said Pringle amiably. "You may be on the jury. I'm going to seek my virtuous couch. Glad we don't have to bed no cattle, _viva voce_, this night." "Ain't he the Latin scholar?" said Headlight admiringly. "They blow about that wire Julius Caesar sent the Associated Press, but old man Pringle done him up for levity and precision when he wrote us the account of his visit to the Denver carnival. Ever hear about it, Sagittarius?" "No," said Leo. "What did he say?" "Hic--hock--hike!" II Escondido, half-way of the desert, is designed on simple lines. The railroad hauls water in tank-cars from Dog Canyon. There is one depot, one section-house, and one combination post-office-hotel-store-saloon- stage-station, kept by Ma Sanders and Pappy Sanders, in about the order mentioned. Also, one glorious green cottonwood, one pampered rosebush, jointly the pride and delight of Escondido, ownerless, but cherished by loving care and "toted" tribute of waste water. Hither came Jeff and Leo, white with the dust of twenty starlit leagues, for accumulated mail of Rainbow South. Horse-feeding, breakfast, gossip with jolly, motherly Ma Sanders, reading and answering of mail--then their beauty nap; so missing the day's event, the passing of the Flyer. When they woke Escondido basked drowsily in the low, westering sun. The far sunset ranges had put off their workaday homespun brown and gray for chameleon hues of purple and amethyst; their deep, cool shadows, edged with trembling rose, reached out across the desert; the velvet air stirred faintly to the promise of the night.