he came from.

"Lagrange."

"And you are going to--"

"Well! that depends pretty much on how things pan out, and whether I
can make the riffle." He let his hand rest quite unconsciously on the
leathern holster of his dragoon revolver, yet with a strong suggestion
to me of his ability "to make the riffle" if he wanted to, and added:
"But just now I was reck'nin' on taking a little pasear with you."

There was nothing offensive in his speech save its familiarity, and the
reflection, perhaps, that whether I objected or not, he was quite able
to do as he said. I only replied that if our pasear was prolonged
beyond Heavytree Hill, I should have to borrow his beast. To my
surprise he replied quietly, "That's so," adding that the horse was at
my disposal when he wasn't using it, and HALF of it when he was. "Dick
has carried double many a time before this," he continued, "and kin do
it again; when your mustang gives out I'll give you a lift and room to
spare."

I could not help smiling at the idea of appearing before the boys at
Red Gulch en croupe with the stranger; but neither could I help being
oddly affected by the suggestion that his horse had done double duty
before. "On what occasion, and why?" was a question I kept to myself.
We were ascending the long, rocky flank of the divide; the narrowness
of the trail obliged us to proceed slowly, and in file, so that there
was little chance for conversation, had he been disposed to satisfy my
curiosity.

We toiled on in silence, the buckeye giving way to chimisal, the
westering sun, reflected again from the blank walls beside us, blinding
our eyes with its glare. The pines in the canyon below were olive
gulfs of heat, over which a hawk here and there drifted lazily, or,
rising to our level, cast a weird and gigantic shadow of slowly moving
wings on the mountain side. The superiority of the stranger's horse
led him often far in advance, and made me hope that he might forget me
entirely, or push on, growing weary of waiting. But regularly he would
halt by a bowlder, or reappear from some chimisal, where he had
patiently halted. I was beginning to hate him mildly, when at one of
those reappearances he drew up to my side, and asked me how I liked
Dickens!

Had he asked my opinion of Huxley or Darwin, I could not have been more
astonished. Thinking it were possible that he referred to some local
celebrity of Lagrange, I said, hesitatingly:--

"You mean--"

"Charl