Mrs. Ellison had given Tom a list of groceries and the money to buy them; Waco Johnson had commissioned him to bring out a supply of tobacco. Tom's hasty exit from Drumwell was responsible for his return to the gate empty-handed, and he was a man with a peck of trouble ahead of him to devise an explanation that would satisfy them without divulging the true reason for his apparent remission.
Waco, evidently on the watch, heard the wagon before it came in sight. He hobbled to the gate, opened it, and stationed himself there like a toll-taker, his mouth dry for a smoke. The old cowpuncher spread a big red-gummed grin all over his face as Tom rounded to and struck the gate with the double team as nicely as Waco himself could have done it. He reached up a broad rough hand as Tom came to a stop exactly beside him.
"Hi, Tom?" he hailed heartily. "How you likes to be a w'ale?"
Tom understood this peculiar pleasantry somewhat better than Mrs. Ellison. While he had no more notion than anybody else what felicity there was in the life of a whale that would urge anybody on the Kansas prairie with a desire to exchange places with one, he knew that Waco meant to express the utmost feeling of friendship, good-fellowship and admiration when he made the specu-
