“Ma’am, we’ve got a vacancy and can sleep yuh fine.” Chuck grabs her valise, and him and the lady and old Sam beats it for the hotel. “Now, what in ---- did Chuck do to cause such a condition?” wonders Magpie. “Chuck lied,” declares Muley. “The son-of-a-gun lied; but what did he lie about?” Naturally none of us knowed, so we went over to Buck’s place and had a drink. We waited around for Chuck, but he didn’t show up; so me and Magpie went home. I said “home,” but it wasn’t home any more. Magpie got dissatisfied right away. “Hawg-pen,” says he. “Anybody could tell that hawgs lived here. Lawd never intended for men to live alone this away.” “You living alone?” I asks. “You don’t count, Ike. A man like me kinda pines for the soft things of life.” “Mush?” “Mush! Naw-w-w! Always thinkin’ of your belly, Ike. A woman don’t mean nothin’ to you.” “I don’t mean nothin’ to her, Magpie; so it’s fifty-fifty. Have you gone and fell into love again? Why, you danged old gray-backed pack-rat!” “Age ain’t no barrier to happiness, Ike. It ain’t kind of you to point out a man’s failin’s thataway. Love knows no barriers.” “Nor nothin’ else, Magpie.” Magpie Simpkins is about six feet and a half in his socks, and he’s built on the principle of the thinnest line between two points. He’s just got hips enough to hold up his cartridge-belt--if he’s careful. His face is long and his mustaches look plumb exhausted from just hanging down past his mouth. His mind is full of odds and ends that never fit into anything. A ordinary man in love can be handled, but Magpie ain’t ordinary. Love is quicksand and no help in sight to that _hombre_. I’ve herded him past several affairs of the heart, liver, and lungs, but each time the attack is harder. The D. T’s are a cinch beside what that pelican suffers when the little fat god of love stings him with a poisoned arrow. Mostly always I hangs a extra gun to my belt and fills my pockets with rocks. Listen to reason? Say, that feller’s ears don’t hear nothin’ but “love, honor and obey”--that, and the church bells ringing. I went to bed that night, leaving him setting on the steps, talking to himself about the gentle touch of a woman’s hand. I asked him if he remembered the one what “touched” him in Great Falls. There wasn’t anything gentle about that one, being as she took his watch and three hundred dollars. That was another case of love at first sight, and then he went blind. As I said before, bad news travels fast. The next day is Sunday, but that ain’t no excuse for every puncher from Silver Bend to Yaller Horse to come to Piperock. I don’t think that the Cross J bunch went home Saturday night. Sam Holt never sold so many breakfasts before in his life. Some of them hair-pant specimens ate two or three times. Muley Bowles comes back to Buck’s place with his belt in his hand, and groans when he tells me that he thinks he got ptomaine poisoning for breakfast. “You done et three orders of ham and aigs,” says Hen.