A former occupant who must have learned his art in the penitentiary had knotted the lace curtains in such a fashion that no one ever had attempted to untie them, while the prison-like effect of the iron bed, with its dingy pillows and counterpane and sagging middle, was such as to throw a chill over the spirits of the cheeriest traveller. It had required all Wallie's will power, when he had arrived at midnight, to rise above the depression superinduced by these surroundings. His luggage was piled high in the corner, while the two trunks setting outside his doorway already had been the cause of threats of an alarming nature, made against the owner by sundry guests who had bruised their shins on them in the ill-lighted corridor. Pinkey's arrival had cheered him wonderfully. Now when that person observed tentatively that $1,800 was "a good little stake," Wallie blithely offered to count it. "You got it with you?" Wallie nodded. "That's chancey," Pinkey commented. "They's people in the country would stick you up if they knowed you carried it." "I should resist if any one attempted to rob me," Wallie declared as he sat down on the rail gingerly with his bulging wallet. "What with?" Pinkey inquired, humorously. Wallie reached under his pillow and produced a pearl-handled revolver of 32 calibre. "Before leaving I purchased this pistol." Pinkey regarded him with a pained expression. "Don't use that dude word, feller. Say 'gun,' 'gat,' 'six-shooter,' anything, but don't ever say 'pistol' above a whisper." A little crest-fallen, Wallie laid it aside and commenced to count his money. Pinkey, he could see, was not impressed by the weapon. "Yes, eighteen hundred exactly. I spent $250 purchasing a camping outfit." Pinkey looked at him incredulously. He was thinking of the frying-pan, coffee-pot, and lard-kettle of which his own consisted. He made no comment, however, until Wallie mentioned his portable bath-tub, which, while expensive, he declared he considered indispensable. "Yes," Pinkey agreed, drily, "you'll be needin' a portable bath-tub something desperate. I wisht I had one. The last good wash I took was in Crystal Lake the other side of the Bear-tooth Mountain. When I was done I stood out till the sun dried me, then brushed the mud off with a whisk-broom." "That must have been uncomfortable," Wallie observed, politely. "I hope you will feel at liberty to use my tub whenever you wish." "That won't be often enough to wear it out," said Pinkey, candidly. "But you'd better jump into your pants and git over to the land-office. We want to nail that 160 before some other 'Scissor-bill' beats you to it." Under Pinkey's guidance Wallie went to the land office, which was in the rear of a secondhand store kept by Mr. Alvin Tucker, who was also the land commissioner.