He vividly called to mind what Joe had suggested, and
Arizona's unfinished sentence rang in his ears, but both suggestions
as a basis of hope he set aside with a lover's egotism. What could
these men know or understand of such a matter?

He had left the barn, and his way took him well out from the ranch
yards in the direction of the pinewoods. He remembered his walk on his
first night on the ranch, and meant to approach the back of the blind
man's house by the same route.

The calm of the prairie night had settled upon the ranch. The lowing
of the cattle was hushed, the dogs were silent; and the voices of men
and the tramp of horses' hoofs were gone. There was only the harsh
croaking of the frogs in the Mosquito River and the cry of the
prowling coyote to disturb the peace of the summer night.

And as he walked, he felt for the first time something of the grip
which sooner or later the prairie fixes upon those who seriously seek
life upon its bosom. Its real fascination begins only when the first
stages of apprenticeship to its methods and habits are passing. The
vastness of its world, its silence, its profound suggestion of
solitude, which ever remains even where townships and settlements
exist, holds for man a fascination which appeals to the primitive
senses and drags him back from the claims of civilization to the old,
old life. And when that call comes, and the latent savage is roused
from the depths of subjection, is it wonder that men yield to what,
after all, is only the true human instinct--the right of the
individual to defend itself from all attacks of foes? No; and so
Tresler argued as he thought of the men who were his comrades.

Under the influence of his new feelings it seemed to him that life was
so small a thing, on which folks of civilization set much too high a
value. The ready appeal to the gun, which seemed to be one of the
first principles of the frontiersman's life, was already beginning to
lose its repugnance for him. After all, where no arbitration could be
enforced, men still had a right to defend self and property.

His thoughts wandered on through a maze of argument which convinced
him notwithstanding he told himself that it was all wrong. He told
himself weakly that his thoughts were the result of the demoralizing
influence of lawless associates, but, in spite of this, he felt that
there was, in reality, something in them of a deeper, more abiding
nature.

He had made the woodland fr