fade out, and the chaparral to grow thicker with a deliberate
viciousness and even when he won through in places, the canon and small
feeders were too precipitous for his horse, and turned him back. But
there was no irritation about it. He enjoyed it all, for he was back
at his old game of bucking nature. Late in the afternoon he broke
through, and followed a well-defined trail down a dry canon. Here he
got a fresh thrill. He had heard the baying of the hound some minutes
before, and suddenly, across the bare face of the hill above him, he
saw a large buck in flight. And not far behind came the deer-hound, a
magnificent animal. Daylight sat tense in his saddle and watched until
they disappeared, his breath just a trifle shorter, as if he, too, were
in the chase, his nostrils distended, and in his bones the old hunting
ache and memories of the days before he came to live in cities.

The dry canon gave place to one with a slender ribbon of running water.
The trail ran into a wood-road, and the wood-road emerged across a
small flat upon a slightly travelled county road. There were no farms
in this immediate section, and no houses. The soil was meagre, the
bed-rock either close to the surface or constituting the surface
itself. Manzanita and scrub-oak, however, flourished and walled the
road on either side with a jungle growth. And out a runway through
this growth a man suddenly scuttled in a way that reminded Daylight of
a rabbit.

He was a little man, in patched overalls; bareheaded, with a cotton
shirt open at the throat and down the chest. The sun was ruddy-brown
in his face, and by it his sandy hair was bleached on the ends to
peroxide blond. He signed to Daylight to halt, and held up a letter.
"If you're going to town, I'd be obliged if you mail this."

"I sure will." Daylight put it into his coat pocket.

"Do you live hereabouts, stranger?"

But the little man did not answer. He was gazing at Daylight in a
surprised and steadfast fashion.

"I know you," the little man announced. "You're Elam Harnish--Burning
Daylight, the papers call you. Am I right?"

Daylight nodded.

"But what under the sun are you doing here in the chaparral?"

Daylight grinned as he answered, "Drumming up trade for a free rural
delivery route."

"Well, I'm glad I wrote that letter this afternoon," the little man
went on, "or else I'd have missed seeing you. I've seen your photo in
the papers many a time, and I've a g