left after paying our passage out; but it will be rough work for you, you know—precious hard work."
"Well, it will be much pleasanter work, at any rate, Tom, than grinding away at Greek and algebra."
Tom did think it over, and the result was that after a consultation with Mr. Ellerman he told Harry that he would take him with him. Their trustee had fallen in with the idea at once. He was a man with a large family of his own, and the problem what to do with Harry had been on his mind ever since his client's death, and this solution of the difficulty was very welcome to him. Two months later Tom and his brother arrived at the ranche in Texas. Tom was at once attached to one of the parties of cowboys, and Harry was kept at the home station, and was to make himself generally useful in aiding the men in looking after the horses and herds maintained there.
It was not long before he learnt to sit the most vicious broncho, and to throw a lasso fairly; then he was sent out as boy with one of the outfits. Here his duties were to look after the bunches of cowboy horses. He was earning wages now, whereas at the home station he had only got his grub; and when not engaged with the horses, he practised continually with his revolver—the greatest ambition of all the boys out on the plains being to become first-rate pistol shots.
Six months later he received the sudden news that his brother Tom had been shot by one of the other cowboys in his outfit, a man who was notorious as one of the best shots there, and who in a quarrel had shot Tom down before the latter could even lay his hand on his pistol. This was a terrible blow to Harry, who had only seen his brother a few times since they came out, and who had hoped ere long that he should be posted to the same outfit with him. He learned that the deed had aroused such indignation among the other cowboys that Jake Swindon had been obliged to leave the ranche.
