He unrolled himself from his bed, and brought from the garments that made his pillow a few toilet articles. He got on his long boy legs and limped blithely to the margin. In the mornings his slight lameness was always more visible. The camp was at Bull Lake Crossing, where the fork from Bull Lake joins Wind River. Here Lin found some convenient shingle-stones, with dark, deepish water against them, where he plunged his face and energetically washed, and came up with the short curly hair shining upon his round head. After enough looks at himself in the dark water, and having knotted a clean, jaunty handkerchief at his throat, he returned with his slight limp to camp, where they were just sitting at breakfast to the rear of the cook-shelf of the wagon. “Bugged up to kill!” exclaimed one, perceiving Lin's careful dress. “He sure has not shaved again?” another inquired, with concern. “I ain't got my opera-glasses on,” answered a third. “He has spared that pansy-blossom mustache,” said a fourth. “My spring crop,” remarked young Lin, rounding on this last one, “has juicier prospects than that rat-eaten catastrophe of last year's hay which wanders out of your face.” “Why, you'll soon be talking yourself into a regular man,” said the other. But the camp laugh remained on the side of young Lin till breakfast was ended, when the ranch foreman rode into camp. Him Lin McLean at once addressed. “I was wantin' to speak to you,” said he. The experienced foreman noticed the boy's holiday appearance. “I understand you're tired of work,” he remarked. “Who told you?” asked the bewildered Lin. The foreman touched the boy's pretty handkerchief. “Well, I have a way of taking things in at a glance,” said he. “That's why I'm foreman, I expect. So you've had enough work?” “My system's full of it,” replied Lin, grinning. As the foreman stood thinking, he added, “And I'd like my time.” Time, in the cattle idiom, meant back-pay up to date. “It's good we're not busy,” said the foreman. “Meanin' I'd quit all the same?” inquired Lin, rapidly, flushing. “No--not meaning any offence. Catch up your horse. I want to make the post before it gets hot.” The foreman had come down the river from the ranch at Meadow Creek, and the post, his goal, was Fort Washakie. All this part of the country formed the Shoshone Indian Reservation, where, by permission, pastured the herds whose owner would pay Lin his time at Washakie. So the young cow-puncher flung on his saddle and mounted. “So-long!” he remarked to the camp, by way of farewell. He might never be going to see any of them again; but the cow-punchers were not demonstrative by habit. “Going to stop long at Washakie?” asked one. “Alma is not waiter-girl at the hotel now,” another mentioned. “If there's a new girl,” said a third, “kiss her one for me, and tell her I'm handsomer than you.” “I ain't a deceiver of women,” said Lin. “That's why you'll tell her,” replied his friend.