One morning as Johnnie was strolling along New Bowery, alert as ever for the sight of a pair of fur-faced breeches, his heart suddenly came at a jump into his throat, and his head swam. For just ahead of him, going in the same direction, was a tall man wearing a One-Eye hat! Without a doubt in his mind that here was some one who knew his dear friend, Johnnie let fall a small box he was carrying under one arm and rushed forward, planting himself, breathless, in the man's way. "Oh, Mister!" he cried. "Oh, where's One-Eye? Would y' tell him for me that I want t' see him?--_awful_ bad! I'm Johnnie--Johnnie Smith!" The man had long hair that covered his collar like Grandpa's. Also he plainly had a temper much like Big Tom's. For after staring down at the boy for a moment, he kicked out at him. "_On_ your way!" he ordered angrily. "Ske-daddle!--you little rat!" Johnnie obeyed. He was stunned--that any man having on a One-Eye hat could act so bad. His pride was hurt, too, at being kicked at in public, and called a rat--he, the intimate of the famous Westerner. And his sense of justice was outraged; he had done nothing to deserve attack and insult. This was not a matter for one of those "think" revenges. He might never see the man again, and whatever he did must be as plain to all passersby as had been the other's performance. So when Johnnie was well out of reach of the long-haired man, he halted to call back at him. "_You_ ain't no real cowboy!" he declared. "Girl's hair! Girl's hair!" But a pleasant experience came treading on the very heels of the unpleasant. This was under the Elevated Railroad in Second Avenue. At the moment, Johnnie chanced to be a great, champing war horse, grandly drawing, by a harness made all of the finest silk, a casket (that small box) filled with coins and bars of gold from Treasure Island. Being a war horse of Camelot, and, therefore, unused to New York and train tracks on stilts, he was prancing and rearing under his gay trappings in wild style when---- Up the stone-paved avenue they came, two and two, two and two, two and two, and behind those twos still others, all boys of Johnnie's own age, all dressed just alike, wearing clean khaki uniforms, new flat-brimmed hats of olive-drab, leggings, and polished brown shoes. What they were he did not know, though he guessed them to be rich, noting how proud was their carriage--chins up, backs straight. Beside them walked their leader, a grown young man, slender, and with a tanned face plentifully touched with red.