e millinery store in
Sanborn, was about the most high-toned ladies' sky-piece that he had
ever beheld. Pete contented himself with buying a new Stetson for
Sheriff Owen--to be delivered after Pete had left town.

Next morning, long before the inhabitants of Sanborn had thrown back
their blankets, Pete was saddling Blue Smoke, frankly amazed that the
pony had shown no evidence of his erstwhile early-morning activities.
He wondered if the horse were sick. Blue Smoke looked a bit fat, and
his eye was dull--but it was the dullness of resentment rather than of
poor physical condition. Well fed, and without exercise, Blue Smoke
had become more or less logy, and he looked decidedly disinterested in
life as Pete cautiously pulled up the front cinch.

"He's too doggone quiet to suit me," Pete told the stable-man.

"He's thinkin'," suggested that worthy facetiously.

"So am I," asserted Pete, not at all facetiously.

Out in the street Pete "cheeked" Blue Smoke, and swung up quickly,
expecting the pony to go to it, but Smoke merely turned his head and
gazed at the livery with a sullen eye.

"He's sad to leave his boardin'-house,"--and Pete touched Smoke with
the spur. Smoke further surprised Pete by striking into a mild
cow-trot, as they turned the corner and headed down the long road at
the end of which glimmered the far brown spaces, slowly changing in
color as the morning light ran slanting toward the west.

"Nothin' to do but go," reflected Pete, still a trifle suspicious of
Blue Smoke's gentlemanly behavior. The sun felt warm to Pete's back.
The rein-chains jingled softly. The saddle creaked a rhythmic
complaint of recent disuse.

Pete, who had said good-bye to the sheriff the night before, turned his
face toward the open with a good, an almost too good, horse between his
knees and a new outlook upon the old familiar ranges and their devious
trails.

Past a somber forest of cacti, shot with myriad angling shadows,
desolate and forbidding, despite the open sky and the morning sun, Pete
rode slowly, peering with eyes aslant at the dense growth close to the
road, struggling to ignore the spot. Despite his determination, he
could not pass without glancing fearsomely as though he half-expected
to see something there--something to identify the spot as that shadowy
place where Brent had stood that night . . .

Blue Smoke, hitherto as amiably disposed to take his time as was Pete
himself, shied suddenly. Through h