I must be having an hallucination. What transformation had come over this sophisticated and aesthetic boy? Johnny-boy didn't place among the top champions, but he held his own.

As we had planned on the phone, I met him in the back corral after the rodeo. When he saw me he threw both arms around my shoulders.

"Fred, you old thing," he said with a Texan drawl. He was with one of the riders that had placed about third, a tall, dark-haired man in his early thirties, Hal Kincaid, whom he introduced. He suggested that the three of us go to the "Top of the Mark."

I went with the two cowboys to their dressing room, where both of them changed into Ivy League suits. Johnny-boy, back in his college uniform, looked more like the poetic youth of his earlier days, but there was a definite self-assurance that he didn't have in those days. I'm sure that no one at the "Top of the Mark" would have thought that either he or Hal were rodeo riders. I was still in a state of quasi-shock when we ordered our drinks.

"You don't know how I've missed this view, Fred," Johnny-boy said, now dropping the Texan drawl, and looking through the window at the lights of the city sparkling below. There's not a greater sight than this view from the "Mark." Tomorrow, we're going down the peninsula. I want Hal to see the Stanford hills." And then came Johnny-boy's story about how he became a cowboy.

He had led that quiet life after leaving California-all through his stay in Minneapolis and throughout the Army. Then on the plane home from Germany he had met Hal, who was also being discharged from the Army. Hal came from a cattle ranch in Texas, and had done some rodeo riding before going into the service. The two of them spent a few days together in New York City, and flew together to Chicago, where they went their separate ways. Johnny-boy returned to his teaching job, and Hal to the ranch. A few months later they met, by arrangement, in Chicago for a weekend. Johnny-boy then went back to Minneapolis to finish the semester and to resign. He joined Hal at the ranch in Texas, and the plan was for him to find a teaching job nearby, so he and Hal could be together. But when Hal left that spring for a rodeo, Johnny-boy went with him. They traveled together for a year. Then Johnny-boy took up riding.

"I knew that if I didn't join the activity of those around me that Hal and I would drift apart," he said. "So little by little, I became a rider. I'm not a big champion, you can see, like Hal, but I can do enough to get by. I was surprised to find that I have a knack for it. When I hold on to that horse I'm bucking everybody and everything that has ever been against me."

"We're only going to do this riding for another year or so," Hal said. "Then we're going to spend all of our time operating our ranch. We'll have enough money, then, to buy one of our own. Right now, when we're not traveling we help my father operate his ranch. Jack handles most of the bookkeeping."

We left the "Mark" and stopped by some other places that Johnny-boy wanted to re-visit. We rode the cable cars, strolled along Fisherman's Wharf, and at dawn were drinking coffee near the corner of Market and Powell. Johnny-boy seemed truly happy. Hal is a fine person. He isn't the stereotyped cowboy. He is educated, having graduated from the University of Texas. In many ways he is much like Johnny-boy, and I could see that they are compatible because of mutual interests and similar sensitivities.

I left them at the corner of Market and Powell. They were to leave for Portland the next evening.

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