"It hurts, all right! but hoss-shoes is a sign of _luck_--and posies is a sign of _love_--and them two signs sure come together this mornin'. 'Oh, down in Arizona there's a--' No, I reckon I won't be temptin' Providence ag'in. This hoss might have some kind of a dislikin' for toad-lizards and po'try mixed, same as the other one. I can jest kind o' work the rest of that poem up inside and keep her on the ice till--er--till she's the right flavor. Wonder how they're makin' it at the Concho? Guess I'll stir along. Mebby they're waitin' for me to show up so's they can get busy. I dunno. It sure is wonderful what a lot is dependin' on me these here days. I'm gettin' to be kind of a center figure in this here country. Lemme see. Now I bruk jail--hopped the Limited, took out me homesteader papers, got thrun off a hoss, slumped right into love with that sure-enough Linda Rosa, and got kicked by another hoss. And they say I ain't a enterprisin' guy! Gee Gosh!" Never so much at home as when alone, the mellifluous Sundown's imagination expanded, till it embraced the farthest outpost of his theme. He became the towering center of things terrestrial. The world revolved around but one individual that glorious morning, and he generously decided to let it revolve. He felt--being, for the first time in his weird career, very much in love--that Dame Fortune, so long indifferent to his modest aspirations, had at last recognized in him a true adventurer worthy of her grace. He was a remarkable man, physically. He considered himself a remarkable man mentally, and he was, in Arizona. "Why," he announced to his horse, "they's folks as says they ain't no romantics left in this here world! Huh! Some of them writin' folks oughter jest trail my smoke for a week, instead o' settin' in clubs and drinkin' high-balls and expectin' them high-balls to put 'em wise to real life! Huh! A fella's got to sweat it out himself. The kind of romantics that comes in a bottle ain't the real thing. Pickles is all right, but they ain't cucumbers, nohow. Wisht I had one--and some salt. The stories them guys write is like pickles, jest two kinds of flavor, sweet and sour. Now, when I write me life's history she'll be a cucumber sliced thin with a few of them little red chiles to kind o' give the right kick, and mebby a leetle onion representin' me sentiment, and salt to draw out the proper taste, and 'bout three drops o' vinegar standin' for hard luck, and the hull thing fixed tasty-like on a lettuce leaf, the crinkles representin' the mountings and valleys of this here world, and me name on the cover in red with gold edges. Gee Gosh!" The creak of the saddle, the tinkle of his spurs, the springy stride of the horse furnished a truly pastoral accompaniment to Sundown's "romantics."