own, the railroad, the string of box-cars on the siding, and seek the
new, the unexpected, an experience to be had only by kicking loose from
convention and stepping out for himself. He thought of writing a Western
story. He realized that all he knew of the West was from hearsay, and a
brief contact with actual Westerners. He would do better to go out in
the fenceless land and live a story, and then write it. And better
still, he would let chance decide where and when he would go.

His first intimation that chance was in his vicinity was the distant,
faint cadence of a song that floated over the night-black mesa from the
north. Presently he heard the soft, muffled tread of horses and a
distinct word or two of the song. He leaned forward, interested, amused,
alert. The voice was a big voice, mellowed by distance. There was a
take-it-or-leave-it swing to the melody that suggested the singer's
absolute oblivion to anything but the joy of singing. Again the plod,
plod of the horses, and then:

I was top-hand once for the T-Bar-T,
In the days of long ago,
But I took to seein' the scenery
Where the barbed-wire fence don't grow.

I was top-hand once--but the trail for mine,
And plenty of room to roam;
So now I'm ridin' the old chuck line,
And any old place is home ... for me ...
And any old place is home.

Bartley grinned. Whoever he was, drifting in from the northern spaces,
he had evidently lost the pack-horse that bore his troubles. Suddenly,
out of the wall of dusk that edged the strip of road loomed a horse's
head, and then another. The lead horse bore a pack. The second horse was
ridden by an individual who leaned slightly forward, his hands clasped
comfortably over the saddle horn. The horses stopped in the light of the
doorway.

"Well, I reckon we're here," said a voice. "But hotels and us ain't in
the same class. I stop at the Antelope House, take a look at her, and
then spread my roll in the brush, same as always. Nobody to home? They
don't know what they're missin'."

Bartley struck a match and lighted his cigar. The pack-horse jerked its
head up.

"Hello, stranger! Now I didn't see you settin' there."

"Good-evening! But why 'stranger' when you say you can't see me?"

"Why? 'Cause everybody knows _me_, and you didn't whoop when I rode up.
Me, I'm Cheyenne, from no place, and likewise that's where I'm goin'.
This here town of Antelope got in the way--towns is