Philip Acton’s face showed boyish embarrassment.

The other continued, with his strange enthusiasm.  “It was great work—­wonderful!  I never saw anything like it.”

There was no mistaking the genuineness of his admiration, nor could he hide that wistful look in his eyes.

“Shucks!” said the cowboy uneasily.  “I could pick a dozen of the boys in that outfit who can ride all around me.  It was just my luck, that’s all—­I happened to draw an easy one.”

“Easy!” ejaculated the stranger, seeing again in his mind the fighting, plunging, maddened, outlawed brute that this boy-faced man had mastered.  “And I suppose catching and throwing those steers was easy, too?”

The cowboy was plainly wondering at the man’s peculiar enthusiasm for these most commonplace things.  “The roping?  Why, that was no more than we’re doing all the time.”

“I don’t mean the roping,” returned the other, “I mean when you rode up beside one of those steers that was running at full speed, and caught him by the horns with your bare hands, and jumped from your saddle, and threw the beast over you, and then lay there with his horns pinning you down!  You aren’t doing that all the time, are you?  You don’t mean to tell me that such things as that are a part of your everyday work!”

“Oh, the bull doggin’!  Why, no,” admitted Phil, with an embarrassed laugh, “that was just fun, you know.”

The stranger stared at him, speechless.  Fun!  In the name of all that is most modern in civilization, what manner of men were these who did such things in fun!  If this was their recreation, what must their work be!

“Do you mind my asking,” he said wistfully, “how you learned to do such things?”

“Why, I don’t know—­we just do them, I reckon.”

“And could anyone learn to ride as you ride, do you think?” The question came with marked eagerness.

“I don’t see why not,” answered the cowboy honestly.

The stranger shook his head doubtfully and looked away over the wild land where the shadows of the late afternoon were lengthening.

“Where are you going to stop to-night?” Phil Acton asked suddenly.

The stranger did not take his eyes from the view that seemed to hold for him such peculiar interest.  “Really,” he answered indifferently, “I had not thought of that.”

“I should think you’d be thinking of it along about supper time, if you’ve walked from town since morning.”

The stranger looked up with sudden interest; but the cowboy fancied that there was a touch of bitterness under the droll tone of his reply.  “Do you know, Mr. Acton, I have never been really hungry in my life.  It might be interesting to try it once, don’t you think?”

Phil Acton laughed, as he returned, “It might be interesting, all right, but I think I better tell you, just the same, that there’s a ranch down yonder in the timber.  It’s nothing but a goat ranch, but I reckon they would take you in.  It’s too far to the Cross-Triangle for me to ask you there.  You can see the buildings, though, from here.”