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 a most self-contained and reticent person for one who must not have been crossed by a visitor for days at a time. Rawlins asked if he might prepare his slim supper at the fire, and was told that he could not.

"You can eat my grub or go empty," the old shepherd said.

He paused in his bacon-slicing as he spoke, looking sternly at his visitor, an unaccountable ring of lightness, almost white in contrast to the general grime of his face, around his eyes. Rawlins wondered if he had washed while he was away, or whether that was an area which the old fellow swept daily to keep the accretions from shutting off his view.

Rawlins was glad enough to accept on the terms proposed, for his own material promised a slim repast. He had not been able to replenish his supplies along the way at ranch houses, as he had expected. The old man's supper was quite a banquet to one who had been living mainly on Bologna sausage and sardines for four days. There were biscuits and beans, bacon and canned tomatoes, even a tin of milk for the coffee and a little glass of preserves at the end.

"I don't always live high like this," the old-timer explained when he had scooped the last of the preserves out of the glass with his finger, which he licked clean, taking off more of the grime in the process than had been removed by any ablution in months. "I'm celebratin' this evening on account of you lookin' like a friend I used to have in my young days. They hung him down in Texas."

"I'd be proud to take his place in every particular but that," Rawlins said, with a droll way of humor