“Why not?” He laughed aloud. “I ask you that, old hoss—why not?”

 CHAPTER III—THE SKY SIGN

Peter Pape sighed a chestful of relief. They pulled on like ordinary pants. But of course that was what they were expected to do. Weren’t they direct from the work room of the most expensive tailor he could locate in Gotham? Even so, he had inserted his silk-socked toes into their twin tunnels with some foreboding. They were different, these long, straight leg-sheaths of his first full-dress suit.

There. The secret is out. Our East-exiled Westerner had followed advice. Praying that news of his lapse never would wing back to Hellroaring, he had submitted himself to measurements for a claw-hammer, known chiefly by rumor on the range as a “swallow-tail.” The result had been delivered late that afternoon, one week since the signs of Broadway had directed him aright. The suit had seemed in full possession of the dressing room of his hotel suite when he had returned from his usual park-path sprint on Polkadot, an event to-day distinguished by the whipcord riding breeches of approved balloon cut which had displaced his goat-skin chaps. Somehow it helped to fill an apartment which hitherto had felt rather empty; with its air of sophistication suggested the next move in the rôle for which it was the costume de luxe.

The trousers conquered in combat, Pape essayed to don the stiff-bosomed shirt which, according to the diagram pinned on the wall picturing a conventional gentleman ready for an evening out, must encase his chest. His chief conclusion, after several preparatory moments, was that the hiring of a valet was not adequate cause for a lynching with the first handy rope. No. There were arguments pro valet which should stay the hand of any one who ever had essayed to enter the costume de luxe of said conventional gentleman. What those patent plungers of his real pearl studs couldn’t and didn’t do! With the contrariness of as many mavericks, they preferred to puncture new holes in the immaculate linen, rather than enter the eyelets of the shirt-maker’s provision.

But we won’t go into the matter. Other writers have done it so often and so soulfully. The one best thing that may be remarked about such trials of the spirit is that they have an end as well as a beginning. At last and without totally wrecking the work of the launderer, Why-Not Pape’s famed will to win won. The shirt was harnessed; hooked-up; coupled.

Now came the test of tests for his patience and persistence—for his tongue and 

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