On an old schooner wagon we started across the plains together. Near the little town of La Junta, came the catastrophe that wrecked my existence.

Al Brown got hold of some whiskey. We stopped for the night in the midst of the prairie. The beans were boiling in the open. He walked up to the fire, looked into the saucepan "Beans, again," he snarled, and kicked the dinner to the ground. Without a word his wife took up the frying pan and beat him over the head. He went out—cold.

The kid and I had to run out to the edge of the prairie. We always did when they started to scrap.

She came out, hooked up the team and began dumping in her things and the kid's.

"Johnny, get your duds; we're going to leave," she said.

I never felt so isolated in my life. The kid didn't want to leave me. I started to cry. It was getting terribly dark. The woman came back. "Honey, I can't take you," she said.

I was afraid of the dark, afraid of the silence. I caught hold of her. She pushed me away, climbed up on the wagon and drove off, leaving me alone on the

prairie with the man she thought she had murdered.

CHAPTER II.

Failure as a bootblack; a friendly foreman; the only kid on the range; flogged at the wagon-tongue; slaying of the foreman; vengeance on the assassin.

I sat there until the night, pulsing and heavy, seemed to fold in on me like a blanket. Then I rolled over on my face and groped along to the embers where Al Brown lay. I wanted company. I crouched down at his side and lay there. I was almost asleep when a queer thumping sent a shivering terror through me. I lay still and listened. It was Al Brown's heart beating against my ear.

The bells and whistles of all New York thundering to the New Year sent me crazy with delight the first time I heard them—the prison gate clanging to on me made me insolent with joy—but never was there a sound so good to hear as the pumping of Al Brown's heart.