the afternoon sun, he suddenly became conscious that the
world seemed very large and that everything he knew was very far away.
The strange sense of doubt as to whether he were really himself, a
curious feeling that the desert often induces, swept over him, and he
was only too ready to enter into conversation when a small, wiry man,
with black hair and quick, alert eyes, came up to him with the rolling
walk that betokens a life spent in the saddle, and said easily:

"Howdy, pard!"

The boy returned a friendly "Good-afternoon," and waited for the
stranger to continue.

"She looks some as if you was the whole pack on this deal," was the next
remark.

"Well," replied Wilbur, looking at him quizzically, "I wasn't conscious
of being crowded here."

The range-rider followed the boy's glance around the immediate
neighborhood, noting the station agent and the two or three figures in
front of the general store, who formed the sum of the visible
population, and nodded.

"Bein' the star performer, then," he went on, "it might be a safe bet
that you was sort of prospectin' for the Double Bar J."

"That was the name of the ranch," said the boy. "I was told to go there
and get a couple of ponies."

"An' how was you figurin' on gettin' to the ranch? Walkin'?"

"Not if I could help it. And that," he added, pointing to the desert, "I
should think would be mean stuff to walk on."

"Mean she is," commented Wilbur's new acquaintance, "but even s'posin'
that you did scare up a pony, how did you dope it out that you would hit
up the right trail? This here country is plumb tricky. And the trail
sort of takes a nap every once in a while and forgets to show up."

"I didn't expect to find my way alone," said the boy. "If nobody had
been here, I'd have found somebody to show me--"

"Hold hard," said the cowboy, interrupting, "till I look over that
layout. If you hadn't ha' found anybody, you'd ha' found somebody?
Shuffle 'em up a bit, pard, and try a new deal."

"But," continued Wilbur, not paying any attention to the interruption,
"I fully expected that some one from the ranch would be here to meet
me."

"If all your conjectoors comes as near bein' accurate as that same,"
said the other, "you c'd set up as a prophet and never call the turn
wrong. Which I'm some attached to the ranch myself."

"I thought you were, probably," said Wilbur, "and I'm much obliged to
you, if you came to meet me."

"That's all right! But if you're