He had brought a peck of new potatoes and a bountiful supply of green peas, as well as onions, beans for baking and a pot to bake them in. But that was not all; he proudly passed over something wrapped in brown paper, announcing: “Here’s some lambsteak for ye. The old gent killed a lamb yesterday, and, thinkin’ mebbe you might like some meat, he cut this for ye and sent it as a present.” “Lambsteak, green peas and new pertaters,” spluttered Crane. “Gee whiz! We’ll sartain have a feast. Say, Simp, yeou’re right abaout yeour old man; he ain’t a bad feller. Get busy, Stoney, and start the repast to cookin’.” Ben was willing enough to do this, for his appetite, like that of the others, had been keenly aroused by camp life. He set his companions shelling the peas and preparing the potatoes, while he started up a good fire. “You fellers seem to be havin’ a pretty good time,” observed Simpson, as he sat watching them. “Guess you’re enjoying it all right.” “Sure we are,” answered Rodney. “Ever camp out?” “Shucks, no; never had no time for that. Guess if you’d ever lived on a farm you’d know how ’twas. Don’t s’pose you’re much used to real work.” Grant smiled. “I was brought up on a ranch, and I reckon I know something about work.” “A ranch!” cried the farmer’s son, his eyes widening. “Where?” “In Texas.” “Sho! You don’t say! Well, I snum!” He suddenly regarded Rodney with an amazing increased amount of respect. “Never saw nobody before that ever lived on a ranch,” he confessed. “Was you a real cowboy?” “In a way, yes; I’ve punched cattle.” “I _do_ declare!” breathed Simpson. “That must be great fun. I’ve always thought I’d like to be a cowboy.” “Have you?” “You bate! I say it must be rippin’ fun to be a real cowboy and jest ride ’round on a horse and do nothing but tend cattle that don’t have to be milked and cleaned and fed in a tieup and fussed over, the way farmer’s critters are. I’ve read about cowboy life, and it sartainly is the kind for me.” The Texan laughed outright. “Not if you are adverse to hard work,” he asserted. “Likely the stories you’ve read about cowboy life have given you the impression that it consists principally of adventure and romance and very little work. But let me tell you straight, partner, there’s no harder work a fellow can do, and there’s mighty little romance connected with it.” But Simpson shook his head incredulously. “Can’t be so,” he doubted. “Sometime mebbe I’ll go West and be a cowboy.” “If you carry out that design,” returned Grant, still smiling, “you’ll soon come to realize the fact that, in the way of work, Eastern farm life is almost play compared with cow-punching. One experience upon the range in a Texas norther would knock all the romance out of your noddle, to say nothing of the lesson you’d get during a good dry, blistering summer, when you’d have to be on the hike day after day from an hour or more before the first peep of dawn until long after nightfall.”