“Off goes Johnny Boy, dressed up in his best black suit, that looked as if it had been made for a statue of a life-sized giant. The sleeves hung down to the middle of his fingers, the pants rolled up six inches at the bottom, and, as he was a ga’nt critter, there was enough stuff in them clothes to make it look as if he could turn right around inside them without attracting attention. “And he come back. “This is what happened. He come into the bull-pen slower than usual. He sat down on the bunk, with his face completely surrounded by hands, and he never opened his yorp till long after we’d et our supper. Then he took me by the arm, and says, ‘Scraggsy, you been my friend for a long time. Come out till I tell you something.’ “I went out and he smoked his cigareet for another half-hour until I had to say: ‘If you have got anything real to tell me, John, why don’t you do it to-night, while we’re sitting out here so comfortable in the frost?’ “Says he: ‘I got up there all right. It was a nice town. There was swimming. There was peace. There was sidewalks, and fellers wearing strange hats. Everything was there, and I think,’ he says, ‘I was more scared of the things I didn’t know whether they could happen or not than I was of the things I knew could happen. “‘My soul had all the fuz roped off of it. I was positive I would never more take two wraps around a cayuse with them legs of mine, and chase a skitty steer some more. “No,” says I, “cow-punching is a lost art.” A feller gets all broke up and tackled with rheumatism before he’s--he’s--well, I ain’t sixty yet, by a durn sight. Anyhow, a feller gets broke up any time, and I think of those lovely homes and nice beds, and it seemed great. “‘The gent behind the counter of the hotel shoved a book and a pen at me. I looked at ’em, wonderin’ if it was an autograft album. The little gals uster have ’em when I was young, and you put your John Hancock down and then something about the rose is red and the violets blue--I forget the rest. “‘I felt queer. It didn’t seem like a man of my size oughter be writing sich sentiments in a large book with lots of people looking on. “‘Howsumever I done it, and the clerk says to me, “You come from the playful districts, just outlying the land of fun, don’t you?” and he added that too much gayety weren’t a good thing. “‘He came to about ten words about it, when I took the flat of my hand and patted him on the back of his head. His nose bled all over the book, and everybody seemed to think there was a kick comin’.