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Rh came to his tanned cheeks. "Here, here, old man," he said, deprecatingly, "you don't seem alive to the—er—dignity of my profession."

"Sky-pilot, eh?" shouted the Maestro. "Gospel-sharp; stuck up about it, eh? Darn-if-I-care; you're still a good fellow. Golly, but I'm glad to see you," he cried, nearly knocking him down with a dig in the short ribs. "Gee, but I'm glad to see you" and he shook him till his teeth rattled. "How long're you going to stay?"

"Three days," answered Huston; "want to start a mission here."

Tolio, the Maestro's muchacho, was unsaddling the pony. The two friends climbed the steps into the house. Unbuckling his belt, the missionary threw his long Colt's upon the table and dropped into a chair, and then they began to talk. It was a strange performance. The words swept out of their mouths in an uninterrupted, turgid, furious stream; they shouted, stammered, giggled; they laughed like artillery thunder, gesticulated like windmills, a hectic flush upon their cheeks, their brains awhirl, mad with the madness that seizes the man of lone stations when at last he can communicate his thoughts, pour out what has been dammed in so long, free himself of the stagnant burden of never-expressed feeling, emotion, inspiration, theories.

But after a half-hour of this, the Maestro began