The droop-shouldered man waited humbly for the climax--which reached so high a tension that the speaker rose upon his toes to deliver it, and drew his right hand from his pocket to aid in the punctuation--when he pulled his hat down on his head and slunk away. It was while the orator was gazing contemptuously after him that he heard Weary cheerfully asking for work. For Weary was a straight guesser; he knew when he stood in the presence of the Great and Only. The man wheeled and measured Weary slowly with his eyes--and there being a good deal of Weary if you measured lengthwise, he consumed several seconds doing it. "Humph!" when the survey was over. "What do _you_ know about horses?" His tone was colored still by the oration he had just delivered, and it was not encouraging. Weary looked down upon him and smiled indulgence of the tone. "If you aren't busy right now, I'll start in and tell yuh. Yuh better sit down on that bucket whilst I'm doing it--if I'm thorough it'll take time." "Humph!" said the man again and carefully pared the end of a fat, black cigar. "You seem to think you know it all. What's your trade?" "Punching cows--in Northern Montana," answered Weary, mildly. The man took the trouble to look at him again, this time more critically--and more favorably, perhaps. "Bronco-buster?" he demanded, briefly. "Some," grinned Weary, his thoughts whirling back to the dust and uproar in the Flying U corrals--and to Glory. The man seemed to read what was in his eyes. "You ought to know better than to founder a three-hundred-dollar trotter, then," he remarked, with some of the growl smoothed out of his voice. "I sure had," agreed Weary, sympathetically. "That's why I fired that four-or-five-kinds-of idiot just now," confided the other, rising to the sympathy in Weary's tone. "I need men that know a little something about horses--the foreman can't always be at a man's elbow. You can start right in--pay's good. Go tell the foreman I've hired you; that's him back there in the office." Then came the rain. Week after week of drab clouds and drizzle, and no sun to hearten a man for his work. Week after week of bobbing umbrellas, muddy crossings, sloppy pavements and dripping eaves--and a cold that chilled the marrow in his bones. Weary, after a week of poking along in the rain of an evening when his work was done, threw up his hands, figuratively, and bought him an umbrella, hoping devoutly they would never get to hear of it in Dry Lake. He stood for two minutes in the deep doorway of the store before he found nerve to open the awkward thing, and when he did so he glanced sheepishly around him as if it were a weak thing to do and a disgraceful.