title: Hilda and Friends: Hilarious Cowboy Poetry by the West's Foremost Poetess
author: Sam Deleeuw
description: Hilda the Trail Drive Cook<br /> Six Foot Four and Three Hundred Pounds<br /> Weathered and Toothless, What A Look<br /> Stronger Than Redrock, Cactus or Cows...<br /> Her Trailside Stories and Antics Alike<br /> Will Keep You Smilin' On the Train...
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  # Soldiers of Fortune
  
  
  ### Richard Harding Davis
  
  
  
      
  
  TO
  
  IRENE AND DANA GIBSON
  
  
  
  ### I
  
  
    
  ``It is so good of you to come early,'' said Mrs. Porter, as Alice Langham
  entered the drawing-room. ``I want to ask a favor of you. I'm sure you won't
  mind. I would ask one of the debutantes, except that they're always so cross
  if one puts them next to men they don't know and who can't help them, and so I
  thought I'd just ask you, you're so good-natured. You don't mind, do you?''  
  ``I mind being called good-natured,'' said Miss Langham, smiling. ``Mind what,
  Mrs. Porter?'' she asked.  
  ``He is a friend of George's,'' Mrs. Porter explained, vaguely.  ``He's a
  cowboy. It seems he was very civil to George when he was out there shooting in
  New Mexico, or Old Mexico, I don't remember which. He took George to his hut
  and gave him things to shoot, and all that, and now he is in New York with a
  letter of introduction. It's just like George. He 