It was Jim Stanton, foreman of the 101 Ranch. He had the longest nose, the hardest face and the warmest heart of any man I ever knew. Three years later, when I was 14, Stanton was murdered. I'd like to have died that day.

My prospective patron wore boots with the long, narrow heels, sloping toward the instep, that the cowboys of that time wore. I wanted a closer squint at them.

I stood in his way and asked insultingly, "Shine?"

"Lo, Sandy, never had no paste on them yet; try it."

He didn't like my methods. The black stuck in mealy spots.

"Reckon you didn't daub it right, bub," he said.

"Go to hell, damn you," I told him.

"Pow'ful bad temper, sonny," he drawled. "How'd you like to be a cowboy?"

It was kid heaven opened to me. That night I took my first long ride. Jim Stanton fitted me out from head to foot. I had never sat a horse, but we went 60 miles without a stop. There wasn't a kid on the range. They gave me a man's work and a man's responsibilities. They made me the wrangler, and when I took to running the fifty horses over the hills they used cowboy discipline to teach me that horses should be walked in. They strung me out across the wagon tongue and beat me into insensibility.

After that beating I was an outcast. Nobody so much as noticed me. I longed for the Prairie Kid. I would have run away, but there was no place to go. The resentment that always riled me when the law went against me was burning my heart out. I hated them all.

I was sitting down by the corrals one day when Stanton came along. "Lo, Sandy, here's a new bridle with tassels on it. Get your horse." It was the first thing any one had said to me in three days and I just busted out crying.

I was Jim Stanton's man Friday after that. He came to trust me like the toughest man on the range. He treated me like a pal. Stanton taught me cowboy law and, except for the running of the horses in my early days, I never violated it. I was square as any fellow and was reckoned a valuable hand, though I was ten years younger than most of them.