. Pete had no horse; and the
sheriff, taking him at his word, had refused to give up either one of
the rifles unless Pete would declare which one he had used that fateful
night of the raid. And Pete would not do that. He felt that somehow
he had been cheated. Even the storekeeper Roth discouraged him from
using fire-arms, fearing that the boy might some day "cut loose" at
somebody without word or warning. Pete was well fed and did not have
to work hard, yet his ideas of what constituted a living were far
removed from the conventions of Concho. He wanted to ride, to hunt, to
drive team, to work in the open with lots of elbow-room and under a
wide sky. His one solace while in the store was the array of rifles
and six-guns which he almost reverenced for their suggestive potency.
They represented power, and the only law that he believed in.

Some time after Pete had disappeared, the store-keeper, going over his
stock, missed a heavy-caliber six-shooter. He wondered if the boy had
taken it. Roth did not care so much for the loss of the gun as for the
fact that Pete might have stolen it. Later Roth discovered a crudely
printed slip of paper among the trinkets in the showcase. "I took a
gun and cartriges for my wagges. You never giv me Wages." Which was
true enough, the storekeeper figuring that Pete's board and lodging
were just about offset by his services. In paying Pete a dollar a
week, Annersley had established a precedent which involved Young Pete's
pride as a wage-earner. In making Pete feel that he was really worth
more than his board and lodging, Annersley had helped the boy to a
certain self-respect which Pete subconsciously felt that he had lost
when Roth, the storekeeper, gave him a home and work but no pay. Young
Pete did not dislike Roth, but the contrast of Roth's close methods
with the large, free-handed dealings of Annersley was ever before him.
Pete was strong for utility. He had no boyish sense of the dramatic,
consciously. He had never had time to play. Everything he did, he did
seriously. So when he left Concho at dusk one summer evening, he did
not "run away" in any sense. He simply decided that it was time to go
elsewhere--and he went.

The old Mexican, Montoya, had a band of sheep in the high country.
Recently the sheep had drifted past Concho, and Pete, alive to anything
and everything that was going somewhere, had waited on the Mexican at
the store. Sugar, coffee, flour, and bea