about them a life with which they had no contact. They had not even found a bootlegger.
It was on the second day that Bill, turning on his bench at a figure which had suddenly loomed up beside him, sprang to his feet and let out a whoop.
"Ride 'em, cowboy!" he shouted, and then fell into rapt and admiring silence. From head to foot Tom had lost his identity. He wore a violently blue ready-to-wear suit, a trifle short in the waist and tight across the back, tan shoes and colored socks, and to top it all a soft hat which sat rather high on his head.
"Some outfit, eh?"
"You tell 'em," said Bill. "You go back in those clothes and stand trial, and the jury won't only acquit you. It'll kiss you."
They were a queerer combination than ever after that, Bill in his old clothes which he obstinately refused to change, his battered Stetson, his stocky figure, his bowed legs—the short man's penalty for years in the saddle. And Tom in his outrageously bad clothes and his tight yellow shoes which hurt his feet. But still gayety escaped them. They tried for it. They went back to the same theater the next night and found the stage entrance. But it was cold and dark, and Tom's feet burned like fire, and after all the girls who came out were not the creatures of enchantment they had seemed, but tired looking young women who might have been Clare Hamel, or any of the town girls who walked the streets of Ursula at twilight.
Partly out of bravado, partly out of sheer loneliness, Tom spoke to one of them, but after a quick look up at him she shook her head.
"On your way, little boy," she said, not unamiably. "And don't let the door-man see you. He'll whistle for a cop."
On the third day Bill announced his intention of going back home, and Tom hesitated. So far it had been dull enough, but the thought of going back, to Clare, to that fool Indian business, was worse. Much worse.
"I'm staying," he said at last. "There must be some way
