little group of shearers who, seeming to take him for a woolly lamb, almost had lifted his fleece. Animated by a habit of keeping his accounts in life square, steady in his stand as the mountain peaks that surrounded his home ranch, his courage fortified against fear because he recognized it at first sight and refused to yield to it, he was biding the right time to betake himself “down-town” for the round-up reckoning. But of all that, more anon.

His “less so” was to learn life as it is lived along Gay Way, although he had made no promise to himself to become a part thereof. A sincere wish to explore the greatest Main Street on any map, whose denizens so far had shown themselves elusive as outlaw broncs to a set-down puncher, had moved him to acceptance of the suggestion of ’Donis Moore.

While awaiting the pleasure—or the pain—of the shoe-hook, he considered the indifference of his reception at the Astor, a hotel selected for its location “in the heart of things.” In the heart of things—in the thick of the fight—in the teeth of the wind—right there was where Pape liked best to be. But the room-clerk had seemed unimpressed by his demand for the most luxurious one-man apartment on their floor plan. The cashier had eyed coldly the “herd” of New York drafts which he had offered for “corralling” in the treasury of the house. Clerks, elevator boys, even the dry-bar tenders had parried his questions and comments with that indifferent civility which had made this world, said to be the Real, seem false as compared with his hale and hearty Out-West.

The reply to his first inquiry, anent hotel stable accommodations for the intimate equine friend who, as a matter of course, had accompanied him on an American Express Company ticket, had been more of a shock to him than the height of Mt. Woolworth, first seen while ferrying the Hudson. Mr. Astor’s palace, he was told, had a garage of one-hundred-car capacity, but no stable at all, not even stall space for one painted pony. There were more rooms in the “one-man” suite than he knew how to utilize in his rather deficient home life, but the idea of attempting to smuggle Polkadot to the seventh landing, as suggested by the boast of a more modern hostelry that it elevated automobiles to any floor, was abandoned as likely to get them both put out. He had tramped many side-street trails before he had found, near the river, the stable of a contractor who still favored horses. Only this day had he learned of a riding academy near the southern fringe of Central Park where the beast might be boarded in style better suited to his importance in one estimation at least.

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