Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/101

 poet, even if I ain't nothing but a horse wrangler."

Barrett said he was certain that Fred graced whatever calling he laid his hand to, and that the profession of wrangling was ennobled by numbering him among its practitioners. Fred modestly admitted that he had felt his mind running to the same opinion many a time. The poet wrangler sucked in the last of his cigarette, standing in pose of self concentration while he ground the stump of it between finger and thumb, as many poets scatter the fire of their hearts to see it flicker for a brief moment and die away in the unresponsive dark.

The men began to leave the fire for the bunks in that part of the long cabin set apart for them. Fred Grubb inquired of his new friend what equipment he had, and, on learning that he was provided with blankets, took him to the plank lean-to at the cabin's end.

"Them saddle-gallded hyeners is liable to throw boots at a man if he don't wake up first in the morning," the wrangler explained, with the bitterness of a man who had unpleasant recollections. "I'll bunk you in here with Alvino and me—we're gentlemen, even if our pay is low."

Barrett passed an unrestful night, in a fever of excitement, harassed by a thousand demons which rose in his imagination to plague him for the thing necessity had forced upon him. Short as the night was, he had found it already too long when the camp began to stir before perceptible dawn.

Some subtly developed trait, some sense that stands watchful in his subconscious mind, tells the cowboy