it. All he saw was
a man slouched on its pedestal. He was smiling at him--a twisted,
awkward smile of embarrassed affection.

Mahon's lips parted, but he could not speak. With unsteady hand he
quieted the impatient horse--blinking incredulously. There were the
high cheek bones, the bluish tinge--darker now--the pleading smile, the
leather chaps and dirty Stetson and polka dot neckerchief and huge
spurs, there the coarse brown hands hanging limply over the
leather-clad knees. Two changes had come--one shoulder hung lower than
its mate, and the stiff black hair was tidier. The first, he knew, was
the result of the old wound; the last the outward token of a woman's
care.

"Pete!"

He breathed the beloved name without knowing that he spoke.

The grin on the dusky face widened, the big hands rubbed each other in
confusion. For several seconds they faced each other thus. Suddenly
the half breed whistled twice, and out from the trees trotted an ugly
little pinto. Its right ear turned forward for Mahon's familiar
welcome, the left, struggling to follow, fell away grotesquely in its
upper half. But the weirdly coloured blotches that made it a pinto
were unlike any colour of living hide; and the pinto seemed to feel it.

"Whiskers ain't quite got back 'spectable yet, Boy," grinned Blue Pete.
"I sure dosed her fer fair up thar among them bohunks, an' she's
hangin' her head a bit. But she's the same ole gal, ain't yuh,
Whiskers?"

He whistled again. The pinto sank to the ground and lay as motionless
as the rocks about.

"Ain't lost a trick, not a dang one. An' she knows yuh, Boy. Yuh
ain't changed--not 's much as me. . . . But I'm sure the same old Blue
Pete."

Mahon dug cruel spurs into his horse's sides. Throwing himself from
the saddle, he seized the half-breed's hand and held it in both his own
without a word. A great tear gathered on either eyelid. Blue Pete
laughed in shamefaced happiness and dropped his squinting eyes.

And the pinto tore to shreds the rule of a lifetime: she clambered to
her feet without orders and reached up to nibble at the edge of Mahon's
Stetson. The Sergeant threw an arm about her neck and pressed his face
to the yellow blotch below the left eye. . . .

As the evening shadows from the Hills lay long across the prairie, and
the birds chirped sleepily, Mahon stood up with a sigh.

"You'll have to come in to the barracks, Pete. I--I can't help it."

"Get goin'," grinne