With that I starts down towards 34th-st to see if it was really so about Hank Merrity; for the last glimpse I got of him he was out in Colorado, wearin' spurs and fringed buckskin pants, and lookin' to be as much of a fixture there as Pike's Peak. It was while I was trainin' for one of my big matches, that I met up with Hank. We'd picked out Bedelia for a camp. You've heard of Bedelia? No? Then you ought to study the map. Anyway, if you'd been followin' the sportin' news reg'lar a few years back, you'd remember. There was a few days about that time when more press despatches was filed from Bedelia than from Washington. And the pictures that was sent east; "Shorty Ropin' Steers"--"Mr. McCabe Swingin' a Bronco by the Tail," and all such truck. You know the kind of stuff them newspaper artists strains their imaginations on. Course, I was too busy to bother about what they did to me, and didn't care, anyway. But it was different with Hank. Oh, they got him too! You see, he had a ranch about four miles north of our camp, and one of my reg'lar forenoon stunts was to gallop up there, take a big swig of mountain spring water--better'n anything you can buy in bottles--chin a few minutes with Hank and the boys, and then dog trot it back. That was how the boss of Merrity's ranch came to get his picture in the sportin' page alongside of a diagram of the four different ways I had of peelin' a boiled potato. Them was the times when I took my exercise with a sportin' editor hangin' to each elbow, and fellows with drawin' pads squattin' all over the place. Just for a josh I lugged one of the papers that had a picture of Hank up to the ranch, expectin' when he saw it, he'd want to buckle on his guns and start down after the gent that did it. You couldn't have blamed him much if he had; for Hank's features wa'n't cut on what you might call classic lines. He looked more like a copy of an old master that had been done by a sign painter on the side of a barn. Not that he was so mortal homely, but his colour scheme was kind of surprisin'. His complexion was a shade or two lighter than a new saddle, except his neck, which was a flannel red, with lovely brown speckles on it; and his eyes was sort of buttermilk blue, with eyebrows that you had to guess at. His chief decoration though, was a lip whisker that was a marvel--one of these ginger coloured droopers that took root way down below his mouth corners and looked like it was there to stay. But up on the ranch and down in Bedelia I never heard anyone pass remarks on Hank Merrity's looks. He wa'n't no bad man either, but as mild and gentle a beef raiser as you'd want to see. He seemed to be quite a star among the cow punchers, and after I'd got used to his peculiar style of beauty I kind of took to him, too.