at times on the ranges of to-day, and at the big stockyards when cattle are being unloaded into the pens, but to one who has memories of those wide-flaring days on the Kansas frontier, the sound is a sham and theatrical imitation. There was a wild note in the yip of the old cowboy. When one hears it in these days of Hollywood vaqueros he knows the yipper is one who follows his herd in a Ford.
Not that art is much poorer, or that morality has suffered a setback in the passing of the old-time cowboy and his wild, high-pitched, tremulous howl. It was a sound to raise the hair on the head of a listener whose years did not permit his participation in such scenes as were enacted nightly in Poteet's Casino in the roaring little city of Pawnee Bend. There is something in police sirens reminiscent of that high-voiced revelry.
That sort of thing was new to Bill Dunham, but he had a good face for masking interest, curiosity or surprise. He stood like a man absorbed in some deep problem of his own while the dancers swirled around him with a more or less rhythmic scraping on the roughboarded floor. He was singularly interested in the two men who stood at the bar a few feet from him, waiting a little while between shots, talking in close-mouthed confidences between themselves.
One of these was a tall narrow man, bony, inflamed, morose; the other a hand shorter, of good proportions, younger and quite handsome in a purely animal way. The larger one was a spiny-featured man who seemed to disregard his appearances, probably in the full knowledge that no amount of adornment would do him
