“Our train may pull out before the thing is over, and we would never know who won.”

“Oh, yes we will, because we’re going to stay for the finish.  Why, I wouldn’t miss this afternoon’s fun if forty trains pulled out!”

“I ought to be in Chicago day after tomorrow,” objected the man.

“I ought to be, too.  But I’m not going to be.  For Heaven’s sake, Winthrop, for once in your life, do something you oughtn’t to do!”

“All right,” laughed the man with a gesture of surrender.  “And for the rope throwing contest I’ll pick the other.”

“What other?” The girl’s eyes strayed past the little wooden buildings of the town to the clean-cut rim of the bench.

“Why the other who rode after your handkerchief.  The fellow who lassoed the honourable Mayor and was guilty of springing the pun.”

The girl nodded with her eyes still on the skyline.  “Oh, yes.  He seemed—­somehow—­different.  As if people amused him.  As if everything were a joke and he were the only one who knew it was a joke.  I could hate a man like that.  The other, Mr. Purdy, hates him.”

The man regarded her with an amused smile:  “You keep a sort of mental card index.  I should like to have just a peep at my card.”

“Cards sometimes have to be rewritten—­and sometimes it really isn’t worth while to fill them out again.  Come on, let’s go.  People are beginning to gather for the fun and I want a good seat.  There’s a lumber pile over there that’ll be just the place, if we hurry.”

In the Headquarters saloon Tex Benton leaned against the end of the bar and listened to a Bear Paw Pool man relate how they took in a bunch of pilgrims with a badger game down in Glasgow.  Little knots of cowpunchers stood about drinking at the bar or discussing the coming celebration.

“They’ve got a bunch of bad ones down in the corral,” someone said.  “That ol’ roman nose, an’ the wall-eyed pinto, besides a lot of snorty lookin’ young broncs.  I tell yeh if Tex draws either one of them ol’ outlaws it hain’t no cinch he’ll grab off this ride.  The hombre that throws his kak on one of them is a-goin’ to do a little sky-ballin’ ’fore he hits the dirt, you bet.  But jest the same I’m here to bet ten to eight on him before the drawin’.”

Purdy who had joined the next group turned at the words.

“I’ll jest take that,” he snapped.  “Because Tex has drug down the last two buckin’ contests hain’t no sign he c’n go south with ’em all.”  At the end of the bar Tex grinned as he saw Purdy produce a roll of bills.

“An’, by gosh!” the Bear Paw Pool man was saying, “when they’d all got their money down an’ the bull dog was a-clawin’ the floor to git at the badger, an’ the pilgrims was crowded around with their eyes a-bungin’ out of their heads, ol’ Two Dot Wilson, he shoves the barrel over an’ they wasn’t a doggone thing in under it but a——­”