Aside from forgetting to have breakfast that morning, he had made a pretty fair beginning. He was well on his way, had composed a roan-colored lyric of the ranges, discoursed on the subject of love, and had set his spirit free to meander in the realms of imagination. Yet his spirit swept back to him with a rush of wings and a question. Why not get married? And "Gee! Gosh!" he ejaculated, startled by the abruptness of the thought. "Now I like hosses and dogs and folks, but livin' with hosses and dogs ain't like livin' with folks. If hosses and dogs take to you, they think you're the whole thing. But wimmen is different. If they take to you--why, they think they're the whole thing jest because they landed you. I dunno! Jest bein' good to folks ain't everything, either. But bein' good to hosses and dogs is. Funny. I dunno, though. You either got to understand 'em and be rough to 'em, or be good to 'em and then they understand you. Guess they ain't no regular guide-book on how to git along with wimmen. Well, I never come West for me health. I brung it with me, but I ain't goin' to take chances by fallin' in love. Writin' po'try is wearin' enough." For a while he rode silently, enjoying his utter freedom. But followers of Romance must ever be minute-men, armed and equipped to answer her call with instant readiness and grace. Lacking, perhaps, the grace, nevertheless Sundown was loyal to his sovereign mistress, in proof of which he again sat straight in the saddle, stirred to speech by hidden voices. "Now, take it like I was wearin' a hard-boiled hat and a collar and buttin shoes, like the rest of them sports. Why, that wouldn't ketch the eye of some likely-lookin' lady wantin' to get married. Nix! When I hit town it's me for the big smoke and me picture on the front page, standin' with me faithful dog and a lot of them fat little babies without any clothes on, but wings, flyin' around the edge of me picture and down by me boots and up around me hat--and in big letters she'll say: 'Romance of A Cowboy. Western Cattle King in Search for his Long-lost Sweetheart. Sundown, once one of our Leading Hoboes, now a Wealthy Rancher, visits the Metrokolis on Mysterious Errand.' Huh! I guess mebby that wouldn't ketch a good one, mebby with money." But the proverbial fly must appear in the equally proverbial amber. "'Bout as clost as them papers ever come to it," he soliloquized. "Anyhow, if she was the wrong one, and not me long-lost affiniky, and was to get stuck on me shape and these here chaps and spurs, reckon I could tell her that the papers made the big mistake, and that me Mexican wife does the cookin' with a bread-knife in her boot-leg, and that I never had no Mormon ideas, nohow. That ought to sound kind o' home-like, and let her down easy and gentle. I sure don't want to get sent down for breakin' the wimmen's hearts, so I got to be durned careful."