The picture didn't r'ile him a bit. He sat there lookin' at it for a good five minutes without sayin' a word, them buttermilk eyes just starin', kind of blank and dazed. Then he looks up, as pleased as a kid, and says, "Wall, I'll be cussed! Mighty slick, ain't it?" Next he hollers for Reney--that was Mrs. Merrity. She was a good sized, able bodied wild rose, Reney was; not such a bad looker, but a little shy on style. A calico wrapper with the sleeves rolled up, a lot of crinkly brown hair wavin' down her back, and an old pair of carpet slippers on her feet, was Reney's mornin' costume. I shouldn't wonder but what it did for afternoon and evenin' as well. Mrs. Merrity was more tickled with the picture than Hank. She stared from the paper to him and back again, actin' like she thought Hank had done somethin' she ought to be proud of, but couldn't exactly place. "Sho, Hank!" says she. "I wisht they'd waited until you'd put on your Sunday shirt and slicked up a little." He was a real torrid proposition when he did slick up. I saw him do it once, a couple of nights before I broke trainin', when they was goin' to have a dance up to the ranch. His idea of makin' a swell toilet was to take a hunk of sheep tallow and grease his boots clear to the tops. Then he ducks his head into the horse trough and polishes the back of his neck with a bar of yellow soap. Next he dries himself off on a meal sack, uses half a bottle of scented hair oil on his Buffalo Bill thatch, pulls on a striped gingham shirt, ties a red silk handkerchief around his throat, and he's ready to receive comp'ny. I didn't see Mrs. Merrity after she got herself fixed for the ball; but Hank told me she was goin' to wear a shirt waist that she'd sent clear to Kansas City for. Oh, we got real chummy before I left. He came down to see me off the day I started for Denver, and while we was waitin' for the train he told me the story of his life: How he'd been rustlin' for himself ever since he'd graduated from an orphan asylum in Illinois; the different things he'd worked at before he learned the cow business; and how, when he'd first met Reney slingin' crockery in a railroad restaurant, and married her on sight, they'd started out with a cash capital of one five-dollar bill and thirty-eight cents in change, to make their fortune. Then he told me how many steers and yearlings he owned, and how much grazin' land he'd got inside of wire. "That's doin' middlin' well, ain't it?" says he. Come to figure up, it was, and I told him I didn't see why he wa'n't in a fair way to find himself cuttin' into the grape some day. "It all depends on the Jayhawker," says he. "I've got a third int'rest in that. Course, I ain't hollerin' a lot about it yet, for it ain't much more'n a hole in the ground; but if they ever strike the yellow there maybe we'll come on and take a look at New York." "It's worth it," says I. "Hunt me up when you do." "I shore will," says Hank. "Good luck!"