did
everything else. "The thing to do, then," he drawled, "is to go out and
study up on it. Get in touch with that country, and your local color
will convince. Personally though, I like those little society skits you
do--"

"Skits!" exploded Thurston. "My last was a four-part serial. I never did
a skit in my life."

"Beg pardon-which is more than you did after accusing my studies of
having untidy hair. Don't look so glum, Phil. Go out and learn your
West; a month or so will put you up to date--and by Jove! I half envy
you the trip."

That is what put the idea into Thurston's head; and as Thurston's ideas
generally bore fruit of one sort or another, he went out that very day
and ordered from his tailor a complete riding outfit, and because he
was a good customer the tailor consented to rush the work. It seemed to
Thurston, looking over cuts of the very latest styles in riding clothes,
that already he was breathing the atmosphere of the plains.

That night he stayed at home and dreamed, of the West. His memory,
coupled with what he had heard and idealized by his imagination,
conjured dim visions of what he had once known had known and forgotten;
of a land here men and conditions harked back to the raw foundations
of civilization; where wide plains flecked with sage-brush and ribboned
with faint, brown trails, spread away and away to a far sky-line. For
Phil Thurston was range-born, if not range-bred, His father had chosen
always to live out on the edge of things--out where the trails of men
are dim and far apart-and the silent prairie bequeaths a heritage of
distance-hunger to her sons.

While he brooded grew a keen longing to see again the little town
huddled under the bare, brown hills that shut out the world; to see the
gay-blanketed Indians who stole like painted shadows about the place,
and the broad river always hurrying away to the sunrise. He had been
afraid of the river and of the bare hills and the Indians. He felt that
his mother, also, had been afraid. He pictured again--and he picture was
blurred and indistinct-the day when strange men had brought his father
mysteriously home; men who were silent save for the shuffling of their
feet, and who carried their big hats awkwardly in their hands.

There had been a day of hushed voices and much weeping and gloom, and
he had been afraid to play. Then they had carried his father as
mysteriously away again, and his mother had hugged him close and cried
bitterly