Sundown Slim

or an hour or so and found no break in the level monotony of the mesa. He peered ahead, hoping to see the blur of a hill against the southern stars. The air was cool and clear and sweet

ways of his heritage, each promising new vistas, new adventuring. His wayside fires were his altars, their smoke the incense to his gods. A true adventurer, albeit timid, he journeyed not knowing why, but rather because he knew no reason for not journeying. Wrapped in his vague imaginings he swung along, peering ahead from time to time until at last he saw upon the far background of the night a darker something shaped like a tiny mound. "That's her!" he exclaimed, joyously, and quickened his pace.

irly easy slope to the top. His optimism waned as he saw no light ahead. The night grew colder. The stars flickered as the wind of the dawn, whispering over the grasses, touched his face. He paused for a moment on the crest of the hill, turned to look back, and then started down the slope. It was steep and rutted. He had not gone far when he stumbled an

He had come twenty-five miles across the midnight mesas. Five miles below him was his destination, shrouded by the night,

ub-cedar, hopped to the middle of the road and sat up, staring with moveless eyes at the motionless hump of blanket near the

gether neat and habitable. It is rather a surprise to the chance wayfarer to find the ranch uninhabited. As desolate as a stranded steamer on a mud bank, it stands in the center of several hundred acres of desert, incapable, without irrigation, of producing anything more edible than lizards and horned toads. Why a homesteade

ered in black. It reads: "American Hotel." A band of happy cowboys appropriated the sign when on a visit to Antelope, pressed a Mexican freighter to pack it thi

hite dot at its visible end. "Guess he don't have to travel nights to get 'most anywhere," laughed Sundown. He kicked back his blankets and rose stiffly. The luxury of his yawn was stifled as he saw below him the ranchhouse with some strange kind of a sign above its gate. "If that's the hot

f quizzical uncertainty. "That's the sign, all right,-'American Hotel,'-but the ho

rd-walled room, a slant of sunlight across the floor, and in the sunlight a rusted stove. He walked back to the gateway and stood gazing at the sign. He peered round helplessly.

ook. As he thought of the stove the latitude and longitude of the "joke" dawned upon him with full significance. He drank at the water-hole and, gathering a few sticks, built a fire. From his blankets he took a tin can, drew a wad of newspaper

h and set off at right angles to his pursuer's course. Sundown made the turn, but it was "on one wheel" so to speak. His foot caught in a prairie-dog hole and he dove headlong with an exclamation that sounded as much like "Whump!" as anything else. He uttered another and les

en eating ceases to be a pleasure and becomes a necessity. Sund

o the house and made coffee. After the coffee he came out, rolled a cigarette, and sat smoking and gazing out across t

d, the sun was close to the horizon. He sat back and gazed sideways at his effort. "I'll try her on meself," he said, drawing up his leg and resting the

in' to be ho

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grasshopper

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beat it from

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templating the village pump. "It gives me great pleasure to inform you"-he hesitated and cleared his throat-"that them there words of mine was expired by half a rabbit-small-and two cans of coffee. Had I bee

ly to the ranchhouse and mad