ngs
did. There were a couple of the fellows that I thought were friends of
mine. I found out that they had knifed me; had helped pluck me to
feather their own nests. It hurt, Dick; hurt like hell. Losing the
big ranch in the South was a jolt, I'll admit; seeing those fellows
take it over and split it two ways between them, sort of knocked the
props out from under me. I believed in them, you see. After that I
just wanted to get away and sort of think things over."

"You went to Europe?"

"I did not. I don't know how that report got out, but if people chose
to think I had gone to take a hand in the fighting over there, I saw no
need to contradict a harmless rumor. I took a horse and beat it up
into the coast mountains. I tell you, Dick, I wanted to think! And I
found out before I was through thinking that I was sick of the old
life, that I was sick of people, the sort of people you and I knew,
that there was nothing in the world but horses that I cared the snap of
my finger about, that the only life worth living--for me--was a life in
the open. I drifted up this way. I've been living my own life in my
own way for five years. I am happier at it than I used to be. That's
all of the flat little story, Dick."

"You might have let me know, it seems to me," said Farris a bit stiffly.

"So I might," answered Lee thoughtfully. "I was going to in the first
place. But you'll remember that you were off somewhere travelling when
the bubble broke. When Dick Farris travels," and his grave smile came
back to him, "let no mad letter think that it can track him down. Then
I hit my stride in this sort of life; I grew away from the old news;
the years passed as years do after a man is twenty-five; and I just
didn't write. But I didn't forget, Dickie, old man," he said warmly,
and his hand rested on Farris's shoulder. "You can put it in that old
black pipe of yours and smoke it, that I didn't forget. Some day I
planned to hit town again, heeled you know, and remind you of auld lang
syne."

"You are a fool, David Burrill Lee," said Farris with conviction.
"Look here: you can take a new start, pull yourself together, come
back--where you belong."

But Lee shook his head.

"That's like the old Dick Farris I used to know," he said gently. "But
this is where I belong, Dick. I don't want to start over, I don't want
to come back to the sort of thing we knew. The only thing in the world
I do want is right here. And