is heavy, dark hair and dark gray eyes,
his straight nose and firm mouth under a dark mustache, and his well-set
chin made up an attractive but not handsome face. The magnetism of his
personality was not in manly beauty. It was an inborn gift and would have
characterized him in any condition in life. There was about him a genial
dignity that made men look up to him and a willingness to serve that made
selfishness seem mean. He could not have been thirty, although he had been
on the plains for five years. The West was people by young men. It's need
for daring spirits found less response in men of maturer life. But the
West had most need for humane men. The bully, the dare-devil, the brutal,
and the selfish were refuse before the force that swept the frontier
onward; but they were never elements in real state building. Before such
men as Carey they lost power.

The doctor rode away toward the west, bowing his head before the strong
wind that he knew too well to fear, yet wondering as he rode if he had
done wisely to dare the deepening snow of the buried trail.

"I might have waited a day, anyhow," he thought. "It's a devil of a ride
over to Jim Shirley's, and we got only the tag ends of that storm down at
the Crossing from the looks of this. However, I may as well keep at it
now."

He surged on for a few miles without any signs of an open trail appearing.
Then he dropped to a slow canter.

"I'd better get this worry straightened and my mind untangled if I am to
have any comfort on this ride," he said aloud, as was his wont to do when
out in the open alone. "Everything happens to a man who gives too much
leeway to that indefinite inside guide saying, 'Do this! Let that alone!'
And yet that guide hasn't failed me when I've listened to it."

He let the pony have the rein as he looked ahead with unseeing eyes.

"What made me take this day? First, everybody is well enough to be left
for two or three days, good time for a vacation, and Stewart can take care
of emergencies always. Second, I promised Jim I'd see that his letters got
to him straightway. Third, yes, third, something said, 'Go now!' But
here's the other side. Why go on the heels of a snowstorm? Why not keep
Jim's letter a day or two? It's in my hands. And why mistrust a man who
calls himself innocent 'Thomas Smith?' That's it. He's too innocent.
There's no place on these wide Kansas prairies for that man Thomas Smith.
He'd better get back to his home and his re