“It’s little Joe, the wrangler, he’ll wrangle never more,
  His days with the remuda they are o’er;
  ’Twas a year ago last April when he rode into our camp,
  Just a little Texas stray, and all alo-o-o-n-e.”

Alice leaned toward the man in sudden anger: 

“You’ve been drinking!” she whispered.

Tex glanced at her in surprise:  “That’s so,” he said, gravely.  “It’s the only way I can get it down.”

She was about to retort when Endicott returned from the creek and placed the water pail beside her.

“Winthrop!” she cried, for the first time recognizing him.  “Where in the world did you get those clothes, and what is the matter with your face?”

Endicott grinned:  “I shaved myself for the first time.”

“What did you do it with, some barbed wire?”

“Looks like somethin’ that was left out in the rain an’ had started to peel,” ventured the irrepressible Tex.

Alice ignored him completely.  “But the clothes?  Where did you get them?”

Endicott nodded toward the Texan.  “He loaned them to me!”

“But—­surely they would never fit him.”

“Didn’t know it was necessary they should,” drawled Tex, and having succeeded in building the fire, moved off to help Bat who was busying himself with the horses.

“Where has he been?” asked the girl as the voice of the Texan came from beyond the trees: 

  “It happened in Jacksboro in the spring of seventy-three,
  A man by the name of Crego come steppin’ up to me,
  Sayin’, ‘How do you do, young fellow, an’ how would you like to go
  An’ spend one summer pleasantly, on the range of the buffalo-o-o?’”

“I’m sure I don’t know.  He came back an hour or so ago and woke me up and gave me this outfit and told me my whiskers looked like the infernal regions and that I had better shave—­even offered to shave me, himself.”

“But he has been drinking.  Where did he get the liquor?”

“The same place he got the clothes, I guess.  He said he met a friend and borrowed them,” smiled Endicott.

“Well, it’s nothing to laugh at.  I should think you’d be ashamed to stand there and laugh about it.”

The man stared at her in surprise.  “I guess he won’t drink enough to hurt him any.  And—­why, it was only a day or two ago that you sat in the dining car and defended their drinking.  You even said, I believe, that had you been a man you would have been over in the saloon with them.”

“Yes, I did say that!  But that was different.  Oh, I think men are disgusting!  They’re either bad, or just plain dumb!”

  “We left old Crego’s bones to bleach on the range of the buffalo—­
  Went home to our wives an’ sweethearts, told others not to go,
  For God’s forsaken the buffalo range, and the damned old buffalo-o-o!”

“At least our friend Tex does not seem to be stricken with dumbness,” Endicott smiled as the words of the buffalo skinner’s song broke forth anew.  “Do you know I have taken a decided fancy to him.  He’s——­”