There were two cowboys in the O K O outfit, otherwise called the Hourglass; and these two men were pardners. This, I was given to understand, is a very different thing from being partners. In France, a few years ago, they would have called themselves “buddies.” The relationship is the same, though it appears under another name. The two men were named Jack Mills and Bud Loupel. If you hired one, you hired both. If one was fired, the other quit. If you licked one, the other licked you; and if one became involved in a shooting affray, the other was apt to be somewhere in the background with a gun in his hand and an eye out for possible sharp practice by allies of the party of the second part. The foreman of the Hourglass, being wise in his generation, assigned the two to tasks at which they could work together; and they stayed with that outfit for a length of time that was considered extraordinary in those tempestuous days. That is to say, they labored in the vineyard for the O K O for a matter of a year and a half. At the end of that time Jack Mills was twenty-one and Bud Loupel was twenty-two. As they did their work jointly, so they took their pleasures together; and it came to pass on a certain day that they rode away to town with full pockets and lively plans for the evenings immediately before them. Jack Mills, always the gayer spirit of the two, pulled his gun at the edge of town and perforated the blue sky above him. At the same time he emitted certain shrill sounds and spurred his horse to the gallop. Bud was more given to a certain sobriety and decorum; he did not shoot and he did not yell. But his horse kept close beside the other’s. They swung into the wide and dusty main street with hats flapping, horses racing like jack rabbits, holsters pounding against their thighs. They swept up the street together, saw the same vision at the same instant, and jerked their horses to a sliding, tail-grinding stop with a single movement of their bridle hands. The vision’s name was Jeanie Ross. She was the daughter of old man Ross, the storekeeper, and she had just come home from the East. The rattle of the shots had brought her to the door of the store, and she stood there when the two cowboys discovered her. She looked at them; they stared at her. Then Jack Mills swung boldly to the ground and walked toward her, grinning in his pleasantly likable way. He swept his wide hat low, and he said: “Ma’am, I’m Jack Mills of the Hourglass.” The girl, though she had lived long in the East, was a daughter of the West. She was amused and not displeased, for Jack was easy enough to look at. She smiled, and this emboldened Bud Loupel, who was always conservative, to imitate his pardner’s example. He, too, dismounted and stepped forward, and Jack Mills bowed again to the girl and told her: “Furthermore, ma’am, this here is my bashful friend, Bud Loupel. The cat has got his tongue, but he’s a nice little fellow. Now you know everybody worth knowing.”