re is this calaboose belonging to Mr. Matthews?"

"You passed it on the way out, Pan. Off the road. Gray flat buildin'.
Let's see. It's the third place from the wagon shop, same side."

"All right, Dad," said Pan with cheerful finality. "Let's go back to
the house and talk Arizona to Lucy and Mother for a little. Then I'll
rustle along toward town. Tomorrow you come over to the boys' camp.
It's on the other side of town, in a cedar flat, up that slope. We've
got horses to try out and saddles to buy."

CHAPTER NINE

As Pan strode back along the road toward Marco the whole world seemed
to have changed.

For a few moments he indulged his old joy in range and mountain,
stretching, rising on his right, away into the purple distance.
Something had heightened its beauty. How softly gray the rolling range
land--how black the timbered slopes! The town before him sat like a
hideous blotch on a fair landscape. It forced his gaze over and beyond
toward the west, where the late afternoon sun had begun to mellow and
redden, edging the clouds with exquisite light. To the southward lay
Arizona, land of painted mesas and storied canyon walls, of thundering
streams and wild pine forests, of purple-saged valleys and grassy
parks, set like mosaics between the stark desert mountains.

But his mind soon reverted to the business at hand. It was much to his
liking. Many a time he had gone to extremes, reckless and fun loving,
in the interest of some cowboy who had gotten into durance vile. It
was the way of his class. A few were strong and many were weak, but
all of them held a constancy of purpose as to their calling. As they
hated wire fences so they hated notoriety-seeking sheriffs and
unlicensed jails. No doubt Jard Hardman, who backed the Yellow Mine,
was also behind the jail. At least Matthews pocketed the ill-gotten
gains from offenders of the peace as constituted by himself.

Pan felt that now for the first time in his life he had a mighty
incentive, something tremendous and calling, to bring out that spirit
of fire common to the daredevils of the range. He had touched only the
last fringe of the cowboy regime. Dodge and Abilene, the old Chisholm
Trail, the hard-drinking hard-shooting days of an earlier Cimarron had
gone. Life then had been but the chance of a card, the wink of an eye,
the flip of a quirt. But Pan had ridden and slept with men who had
seen those days. He had absorbed from them, and t