Argosy and Railroad Man's Magazine, Vol. 107 No. 3 — page 13: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE DUKE,-OF drying operations suspended. Amazement was on him, if not fright. Lambert put his hand into his hip-pocket and drew forth a shining All-in-One, which he always had ready there to produce as he approached a door. He stood there with it in his hand, the firelight over him, smiling in his most in- gratidting fashion. That had been one of the strong texts ofthe general agent. Al- ways meet them with a smile, he said, and leave them with a smile, no matter whether they deserved it or not. It proved a man’s unfaltering confidence in himself and the article which he presented to the world. Lambert was beginning to doubt even this paragraph of his general instructions. He had been smiling until he believed his eye-teeth were wearing thin from exposure, but it seemed the one thing that had a grain in it among all the buncombe and bluff. And he stood there smiling at the camp cook, who seemed to be afraid of him, the tin plate held before his gizzard like a shield. ‘There was nothing about Lambert’s ap- pearance to scare anybody, and least of all a bow-legged man beside a fire in the open air of the Bad Lands, wher® things are not just as they are in any other part of this world at all. His manner was rather boyish and diffident, and wholly apologetic, and - the All-in-One glistened in his hand like a razor, or a revolver, or anything terrible and destructive that a startled camp cook might make it out to be. A rather long-legged young nan, in can- vas puttees, a buoyant and _ irrepressible light in his face which the fatigues and dis- appointments of the long road had not dimmed; a light-haired man, with his hat pushed back from his forehead, and a speckled shirt on him, and trousers rather tight. That was what the camp cook saw, stand- ing exactly as he had turned and posed at Lambert’s fifst word. Lambert drew a step nearer, and began negotiations for supper on the basis of an even exchange. “Oh, agent, are your” said the cook, letting out a breath of relief. “‘ No; pedler.” a | don’t know how to tell ’em apart. CHIMNEY BUTTE. 355 Well, put it away, son, put it away, what- ever it is. No hungry man don’t have to dig up his money to eat in this camp.” This was the kindest reception that Lam- bert had received since taking to the road to found his fortunes on the All-in-One. He was quick with his expression of appre- ciation, which the cook ignored, while he went about the business of lighting two lan- terns which he hung on the wagon end. Men came stringing into the light from the noise of unsaddling at the corral with loud and jocund greetings to the cook, and respectful, even distant and reserved, “ eve- nin’s”’ for the stranger. All of them but the cook wore cartridge-belts and revolvers, which they unstrapped and hung about the wagon as they arrived. All of them, that © ts, but one black-haired, tall young man. He kept his weapon on, and sat down to eat with it close under his hand. Nine or ten of them sat in at the meal, with a considerable clashing of cutlery on tin plates and cups. It was evident to Lambert that his presence exercised a re- straint over their customary exchange of banter. In spite of the liberality of the cook, and the solicitation on part of his numerous hosts to “ eat hearty,” Lambert could not help the feeling that he was away off on the edge, and that his arrival had put a rein on the spirits of these men. ~~ Mainly they were young men like him- self, two or three of them only showing gray in beards and hair; brown, sinewy, lean-jawed men, no dissipation showing in their eyes. Lambert felt himself drawn to them with a sense of kinship. He never had been in a cow-camp before in his life, but there was something in the air of it, in the dig- nified ignoring of the evident hardships of such a life that told him he was among his kind. The cook was a different type of man from the others, and seemed to have been pitched into the game like the last pawn of a desperate player. He was ashort man, thick in the body, heavy in the shoulders, so bow-legged that he weaved from side to side when he walked, like a sailor. It seemed, indeed, that he must have taken to a horse very early in life, while his legs were CELDOO© Co S (C(O) mM