“Me?” James Legg smiled broadly around the room. “I’m going to be a cowpuncher.”
“A—a—what?”
“A cowboy, if that makes it plain to you.”
One of the stenographers tittered. She had her own idea of a cowboy, possibly not from the real article; so she might be forgiven for seeing humor in Legg’s statement. He flushed a little, turned on his heel and went to the wash-room, every one looking after him. Blair Mellon broke the spell with—
“The incident is over, I believe, ladies and gentlemen.”
Which was sufficient to put them all back to work, while James Eaton Legg accepted his pay from the stiff-faced cashier and walked out into the foggy street. He felt just a little weak over it all. It was hard to realize that he was at last without a job.
It was the first time in years that he had been without a job, and the situation rather appalled him, and he stopped on a corner, wondering whether he hadn’t been just a trifle abrupt in quitting Mellon & Company.
But he realized that the die was cast; so he went to his boarding-house and to his room, where he secured an old atlas. Spreading out a map on the bed he studied the western States. Arizona seemed to appeal to him; so he ran a pencil-point along the railroad lines, wondering just where in Arizona he would care to make his start.
The pencil-point stopped at Blue Wells, and he instinctively made a circle around the name. It seemed rather isolated, and James Legg had an idea that it must be a cattle country. Something or somebody was making a noise at his door; so he got up from the bed.
He opened the door and found that the noise had been made by a dog; a rough-coated mongrel, yellowish-red, with one black eye, which gave him a devil-may-care expression. He was dirty and wet, panting from a hard run, but he sat up and squinted at James Legg, his tongue hanging out.