ning, caught out two horses from my string instead
of one, told the wagon-boss I was going back to the ranch, and lit
out--with the whole bunch grinning after me. As they would have said,
they were all "dead next," but were good enough not to say so. Or,
perhaps, they remembered the boxing-lessons I had given them in the
bunk-house a year or more ago.

I did feel kind of sneaking, quitting them like that; but it's like
playing higher than your logical limit: you know you're doing a fool
thing, and you want to plant your foot violently upon your own person
somewhere, but you go right ahead in the face of it all. They didn't have
to tell me I was acting like a calf that has lost his mother in the herd.
(You know he is prone to go mooning back to the last place he was with
her, if it's ten miles.) I knew it, all right. And when I topped a hill
and saw the high ridges and peaks of White Divide stand up against the
horizon to the north, I was so glad I felt ashamed of myself and called
one Ellis Carleton worse names than I'd stand to hear from anybody else.

Still, to go back to the metaphor, I kept on shoving in chips, just as if
I had a chance to win out and wasn't the biggest, softest-headed idiot the
Lord ever made. Why, even Perry Potter almost grinned when I came riding
up to the corral; and I caught the fellow that was kept on at the ranch,
lowering his left lid knowingly at the cook, when I went in to supper that
first night. But I was too far gone then to care much what anybody
thought; so long as they kept their mouths shut and left me alone, that
was all I asked of them. Oh, I was a heroic figure, all right, those days.

On a day in June I rode dispiritedly over to the little butte just out
from the mouth of the pass. Not that I expected to see her; I went because
I had gotten into the habit of going, and every nice morning just simply
_pulled_ me over that way, no matter how much I might want to keep away.
That argues great strength of character for me, I know, but it's
unfortunately the truth.

I knew she was back--or that she should be back, if nothing had happened
to upset their plans. Edith had written me that they were all coming, and
that they would have two cars, this summer, instead of just one, and that
they expected to stay a month. She and her mother, and Beryl and Aunt
Lodema, Terence Weaver--deuce take him!--and two other fellows, and a
Gertrude--somebody--I forget just who. Edith hoped that I woul