s heels.

"He thinks a heap of Molly," opined Sam. "I reckon he sure hates to
lose her, if he is woman-shy. 'Course Molly was jest a kid. But I don't
fancy she'll take the back-trail once she gits mixed up with the Keith
outfit."

"I ain't so plumb sure of that," returned Mormon. "Molly's bo'n an' bred
with the West in her blood. She'll allus hear the call of the range,
like a colt that's stepped wild. He'll drink at the tank, but he ain't
forgettin' the water-hole."

Sam glanced at Mormon curiously. It wasn't often Mormon showed any touch
of what Sam characterized as poetical.

Sandy, under the cottonwoods where the spring bubbled, so near the old
prospector's grave that perhaps the old-miner lying there could, in his
new affinities with Nature, hear its flow, was thinking much the same
thing Mormon had expressed, hoping it might be true, chiding himself
lest the thought be selfish.

A granite block stood now as marker for Patrick Casey's resting-place,
carved with the words that Mormon had chalked on the wooden headstone. A
railing outlined the grave, and the turf within it was kept short and
green. Sandy squatted down and rolled a cigarette, smoking it as he sat
cross-legged. Grit, as was his custom, leaped the railing lightly and
lay down above the dust of his dead master, head couched on paws, turned
a little sidewise, his grave eyes surveying Sandy.

"Miss her, ol' son? So do I. Mebbe she'll come back to see us-all. She
sure did seem to belong."

Memories of Molly flickered across the screen of his mind: Molly beside
her father by the broken wagon, climbing to get the cactus blossom for
his cairn; Molly at the grave; Molly giving him the gold piece; the wild
ride across the pass and the race for the train and a recollection that
was freshest of all, one he had not mentioned to his partners; the touch
of Molly's lips on his as he had bade her good-by. The kiss had not been
that of a child, there had been a magic in it that had thrilled some
chord in Sandy that still responded to that remembrance. He never dwelt
on it long, it brought a vague reaction always, stirred that strange
instinct of his that had branded him as woman-shy, kept him clean. Part
of it was intuitive desire for freedom of will and action, as the wild
horse shies at even the shadow of a halter that may mean bondage,
however pleasant. Part of it was reverence for woman, deep-seated, a
hazy, never analyzed feeling that this belief might be d