and long. The rest was blank. When one is only five, the
present quickly blurs what is past, and he wondered that, after
all these years, he should feel the grip of something very like
homesickness--and for something more than half forgotten. But though
he did not realize it, in his veins flowed the adventurous blood of his
father, and to it the dim trails were calling.

In four days he set his face eagerly toward the dun deserts and the
sage-brush gray.

At Chicago a man took the upper berth in Thurston's section, and settled
into the seat with a deep sigh--presumably of thankfulness. Thurston,
with the quick eye of those who write, observed the whiteness of his
ungloved hands, the coppery tan of cheeks and throat, the clear keenness
of his eyes, and the four dimples in the crown of his soft, gray hat,
and recognized him as a fine specimen of the Western type of farmer,
returning home from the stockman's Mecca. After that he went calmly back
to his magazine and forgot all about him.

Twenty miles out, the stranger leaned forward and tapped him lightly on
the knee. "Say, I hate to interrupt yuh," he began in a whimsical drawl,
evidently characteristic of the man, "but I'd like to know where it is
I've seen yuh before."

Thurston glanced up impersonally, hesitated between annoyance and a
natural desire to, be courteous, and replied that he had no memory of
any previous meeting.

"Mebby not," admitted the other, and searched the face of Thurston with
his keen eyes. It came to Phil that they were also a bit wistful, but he
went unsympathetically back to his reading.

Five miles more and be touched Thurston again, apologetically yet
insistently. "Say," he drawled, "ain't your name Thurston? I'll bet
a carload uh steers it is--Bud Thurston. And your home range is Fort
Benton."

Phil stared and confessed to all but the "Bud."

"That's what me and your dad always called yuh," the man asserted.
"Well, I'll be hanged! But I knew it. I knew I'd run acrost yuh
somewheres. You're the dead image uh your dad, Bill Thurston. And me and
Bill freighted together from Whoop-up to Benton along in the seventies.
Before yuh was born we was chums. I don't reckon you'd remember me? Hank
Graves, that used to pack yuh around on his back, and fill yuh up on
dried prunes--when dried prunes was worth money? Yuh used to call 'em
'frumes,' and--Why, it was me with your dad when the Indians pot-shot
him at Chimney Rock; and it was me helped