rize that went with
it. That money, in Phil's mind, was to play a very important part in a
long cherished dream that was one of the things that Phil Acton did not
talk about. He had not, in fact, ridden for the championship at all, but
for his dream, and that was why it mattered so much when Kitty seemed so
to lack interest in his success.

As though his subconscious mind directed the movement, the young man
looked away from Kitty's home to the distant mountain ridge where the
night before on the summit of the Divide he had met the stranger. All
the way home the cowboy had wondered about the man; evolving many
theories, inventing many things to account for his presence, alone and
on foot, so far from the surroundings to which he was so clearly
accustomed. Of one thing Phil was sure--the man was in trouble--deep
trouble. The more that the clean-minded, gentle-hearted lad of the great
out-of-doors thought about it, the more strongly he felt that he had
unwittingly intruded at a moment that was sacred to the stranger--sacred
because the man was fighting one of those battles that every man must
fight--and fight alone. It was this feeling that had kept the young man
from speaking of the incident to anyone--even to the Dean, or to
"Mother," as he called Mrs. Baldwin. Perhaps, too, this feeling was the
real reason for Phil's sense of kinship with the stranger, for the
cowboy himself had moments in his life that he could permit no man to
look upon. But in his thinking of the man whose personality had so
impressed him one thing stood out above all the rest--the stranger
clearly belonged to that world of which, from experience, the young
foreman of the Cross-Triangle knew nothing. Phil Acton had no desire for
the world to which the stranger belonged, but in his heart there was a
troublesome question. If--if he himself were more like the man whom he
had met on the Divide; if--if he knew more of that other world; if he,
in some degree, belonged to that other world, as Kitty, because of her
three years in school belonged, would it make any difference?

From the distant mountain ridge that marks the eastern limits of the
Williamson Valley country, and thus, in a degree, marked the limit of
Phil's world, the lad's gaze turned again to the scene immediately
before him.

The band of horses, followed by the cowboys, were trotting from the
narrow pass out into the open flats. Some of the band--the mothers--went
quietly, knowing from pa