There was not much romance for Bill Dunham in making his bed on a blanket out under the stars, for even the bones of tired youth will find the inequalities of the sod, every stick and small stone, before daylight breaks. Bill Dunham wondered if men ever grew so hardened to the earth's unpadded surface for a mattress that they could stretch out, lie still and sleep serenely. It was a matter open to the most substantial doubt.
His second night on a cowboy's bed was not as successful as his first, for he was a grain between the millstones of conscience and the lumpy surface of buffalo-grass sod. He tossed and groaned, thinking what a dunce he had been to leave the land of feather beds to come out there pursuing the enchantment of distance, where romance materialized as trouble and the selfishness of men stood out raw-boned on the gray-green prairie without a bush to hide its vulpine ugliness.
Dunham was troubled over what he had done. While he knew very well his act had been within the law, he didn't like to think of the possible devastation Texas fever might work in the herds of men quite innocent of any affront to him. He had been moved by a flare of hate against Moore, which had cooled now and
