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is in the south of the Panhandle of Texas, and its southern border lies some forty miles or so north of Painted Rock. But as Painted Rock is the only town thereabouts everybody in Scurry County knows it. It is the trading centre of the district, and on the north-west plateau of Texas forty miles is not too far to ride for a drink, when a drink or a jamboree is indicated. It is not too far, either, to ride for the purposes of love-making, as Jack Higginson of Ennis Creek in Scurry knew well enough. The boys out there love space and distances and the fine clear atmosphere of the prairie, and they know in their hearts there is nothing so good as the air on which they were bred, or the girls who grow up there with them.