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HE next few weeks were busy ones on the farm. Before the wheat harvest was over, Nat Wheeler packed his leather trunk, put on his “store clothes,” and set off to take Tom Wested back to Maine. During his absence Ralph began to outfit for life in Yucca county. Ralph liked being a great man with the Frankfort merchants, and he had never before had such an opportunity as this. He bought a new shot gun, saddles, bridles, boots, long and short storm coats, a set of furniture for his own room, a fireless cooker, another music machine, and had them shipped to Colorado. His mother, who did not like phonograph music, and detested phonograph monologues, begged him to take the machine at home, but he assured her that she would be dull without it on winter evenings. He wanted one of the latest make, put out under the name of a great American inventor.

Some of the ranches near Wested’s were owned by New York men who brought their families out there in the summer. Ralph had heard about the dances they gave, and he was counting on being one of the guests. He asked Claude to give him his dress suit, since Claude wouldn’t be needing it any more.

“You can have it if you want it,” said Claude indifferently. “But it won’t fit you.”

“I’ll take it in to Fritz and have the pants cut off a little, and the shoulders taken in,” his brother replied lightly.

Claude was impassive. “Go ahead. But if that old Dutchman takes a whack at it, it will look like the devil.”