an outfit was going home from Kansas City, its fancily labelled bottles passing around without stint from lip to lip. There were outbursts of hilarity and a little shooting now and then; once in a while a bunch went wild and had things its own way, but taken in the main these home-going excursions were comfortable, friendly, full of genial appreciation of what had been seen and keen anticipation of telling about it in cow-camps by and by.
Such a good-natured gang was that of the Bar-Heart-Bar, starting home from escorting a thousand-odd grass-fattened cattle to market. The four of them had gone aboard the minute the train was placed, where they had taken possession of the front end of the smoker, turned two seats to face, stowed their prod-poles and squared off for the practically all-day ride to Wellington, where they would change trains for Drumwell on the Cherokee Nation border, fifty miles from home.
The party was one short, either through desertion or mischance, a matter that gave them some concern. Waco Johnson was the delinquent person. He had strayed in his hobble during the night from the Stockyards Hotel, lured away, perhaps, by the familiar sounds of cattle in the pens close under the windows, and had failed to show up. Now they were due to roll out in fifteen minutes, leaving Mr. Johnson facing the problem of paying his own fare back to the starting-point if he had the desire in his gizzard to keep his job with the Bar-Heart-Bar. It was altogether unlikely, they knew, that he would have enough money to meet that contingency as a gentleman should.
"Well, I guess I'll take another look around for him," Sid Coburn said, more vexed than anxious, hoisting him-
