want to pass as one of my men," Coburn finally proposed. "I've got a pass for five men, and only four of us in the bunch since we lost Waco Johnson."
The young man accepted the offer with dignity, quietly grateful, no effusion of thanks in his mouth. He wasn't any man's greenhorn, whatever his line might be; Coburn was certain of that. He introduced himself as Thomas Simpson, shaking hands solemnly all around when Coburn presented him to the gang, explaining that, as far as the pass was concerned, he was as much one of them as the lost Waco Johnson ever had been.
Coburn sat by his substitute for Johnson and politely inquired into his past activitives in a business way, calling him Tom with the fraternal equality of a man who is unaware of any superior among his kind. For one man was as good as another as long as he behaved himself, as they used to say on the range. It developed that Tom's last contact with a money-making job had been as a mine guard in Colorado. Before that time he had skirmished around some, he said, without going into details.
It came out finally that Tom's skirmishing had been among various cow-camps and outfits in Wyoming and Colorado; that he had been over from England about seven years, having come with high ambitions toward learning the cattle business as conducted on the western ranges, with a view of going into it himself if fortune should roll his number out of the box. It hadn't rolled out yet, it seemed, and Tom laughed over it when he made the confession, a short little laugh, somewhat hard and cynical, Coburn thought, saying a good deal more of disap-
