les coming and going at the corners of the kindly
eyes. "Did you have the nerve to think you were going to climb down from
a three-legged stool in a Boston law office one day and ride the fifty
miles from Twin Buttes to the capital the next?"

"Oh, no; I wasn't altogether daft. But knowing where I was, I did think
I could ride out to Debbleby's. So I hired the bronco and set out--and
that reminds me: the horse will have to be sent back to the liveryman in
Twin Buttes, some way."

"Never mind the cayuse. Shackford would have made you a present of it
outright if you had told him who you were. Go on with your story. It
listens like a novel."

"I took the general direction all right on leaving Twin Buttes, and kept
it until I got among the Lost River hogbacks. But after that I was
pretty successfully lost. I'm ashamed to tell it, but about half of the
time the moon didn't seem to be in the right place."

"Lost, were you? And Jack Barto found you?" queried the father.

"Barto hadn't lost me to any appreciable extent," was the half-humorous
emendation. And then: "Who is this ubiquitous Barto who goes around
playing the hold-up one minute and the good angel the next?"

"He is a sort of general utility man for Hathaway, the head pusher of
the Twin Buttes Lumber Company. He is supposed to be a timber-cruiser
and log-sealer, but I reckon he doesn't work very hard at his trade.
Down in the lower wards of New York they'd call him a boss heeler,
maybe. But you say 'hold-up'; you don't mean to tell me that Jack Barto
robbed you, son!"

"Oh, no; he held me up with a gun while his helpers pulled me off the
bronco and hog-tied me, and then fell to discussing with the other two
the advisability of knocking me on the head and dropping me into Lost
River Canyon--that's all. Of course, I knew they had stumbled upon the
wrong man; and after a while I succeeded in making Barto accept that
hypothesis; at least, he accepted it sufficiently to bring me here for
identification. Since he wouldn't talk, and I didn't recognize the trail
or the place, I hadn't the slightest notion of my whereabouts--not the
least in the world; didn't know where he was taking me or where I had
landed when we stopped here."

The big man was leaning against the foot-rail of the bed and frowning
thoughtfully. "Talked about dropping you into Lost River, did they? H'm.
I reckon we'll have to look into that a little. Who set them on, son?
Got any idea of that?"