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In New Mexico, Young Dick drifted into the Jingle-bob Ranch, north of Roswell, in the Pecos Valley He was not yet fourteen, and he was accepted as the h" cowboy by cowboys who, on legal papers, legally signed nah Pockets

Here, during a stay of sixDick, soft of frae of horses and horseh and raw, that became a life asset More he learned There was John Chisule-bob, the Bosque Grande, and of other cattle ranches as far away as the Black River and beyond John Chisu of the fare to barbed wire, and who, in order to do so, had purchased every forty acres carrying water and got for nothing the use of the e that orthless without the water he controlled And in the talk by the ca forty-dollar-a-month cowboys who had not foreseen what John Chisu Dick learned precisely why and how John Chisu while a thousand of his conte Dick was no cool-head His blood was hot He had passion, and fire, and male pride Ready to cry fronore the thousand aching creaks in his body and with the stoic brag of silence to withstain from his blankets until the hard-bitten punchers led the way By the same token he straddled the horse that was apportioned hiht-herd, and knew no hint of uncertainty when it ca slicker He could take a chance It was his joy to take a chance But at such times he never failed of due respect for reality He ell aware that men were soft-shelled and cracked easily on hard rocks or under pounding hoofs And when he rejected a s in quick action and stumbled, it was not because he feared to be cracked, but because, when he took a chance on being cracked, he wanted, as he told John Chisum himself, "an even break for his le-bob, butDick wrote a letter to his guardians Even then, so careful was he, that the envelope was addressed to Ah Sing Though unburdened by his twentyhis estate ht possibly inhabit New England, he warned his guardians that he was still alive and that he would return home in several years Also, he ordered theular salary