The relationship between my brother and his men was one of honest comradeship but of absolute respect, each for the other, and on the part of the cowboys there was, as well, toward their “Boss,” a certain reverential attitude in spite of the “man to man” equality. How I loved that first night that we sat around the fire, when the men, in their effort to give my brother all the news of the vicinity during his absence, told the type of tale which has had its equivalent only in Owen Wister’s “The Virginian.” “There is a sky-pilot a good many miles from here, Mr. Roosevelt,” said Sylvane, “who’s bringin’ a suit against you.” Sylvane announced this unpleasant fact with careless gaiety, stretching his long legs toward the fire. No one was ever so typically the ideal cowboy of one’s wildest fancy as was Sylvane Ferris. Tall and slender, with strong fair hair and blue eyes of an almost unnatural clearness, and a splendid broad brow and aquiline nose, Sylvane looked the part. His leather chaps, his broad sombrero hat, his red handkerchief knotted carelessly around his strong, young, sunburned throat, all made him such a picture that one’s eye invariably followed him as he rode a vicious pony, “wrastled” a calf, roped a steer, or branded a heifer; but now sitting lazily by the fire, such activities seemed a thing of the past, and Sylvane was ready for an hour’s gossip. “A sky-pilot? Why should a sky-pilot bring suit against me?” said my brother laughingly. [In telling this story he sometimes referred to this man as a professor.] “Well,” said Sylvane, “it was this way, Mr. Roosevelt. You see, we was all outside the ranch door when up drives the sky-pilot in a buggy. He was one of them wanderin’ ones that thought he could preach as he wandered, and just about as he drove up in front of our ranch his horse went dead lame on him and his old buggy just fell to pieces. He was in a bad fix, and he said he knew you never would let him be held up like that, because he had heard you was a good man too, and wouldn’t we lend him a horse, or send him with the team to the next place he was going to, some forty miles away. We felt we had to be hospitable-like, with you so far away and the sky-pilot in such a fix, so we said ‘Yes,’ we would send him to where he wanted to go, and there he is now, lyin’ in a hut with one leg broken and one arm nearly wrenched off his body, and he’s bringin’ suit against you, which ain’t really fair, we think.” “What do you mean, Sylvane; what have I got to do with his broken leg and arm?” said my brother, beginning to feel a trifle nervous.