f San Leonardo, where, he had been told, he could find a
night's lodging. He was tired and footsore; in addition to the English
five-pound note, he possessed but very little of the money with which he
had left the circus; though, during his tramp, he had been able to get
an occasional job, helping some herdsman rounding up his cattle or
assisting timbermen to adjust their loads, and he was hoping that he
would find some permanent employment in one of the big towns. He had the
road to himself, and was feeling rather down on his luck, as a
friendless man in a strange land must do; and, worse than all, he was,
at that moment, terribly home-sick. Not for the first time, he had
realized how much he had given up when he decided to sacrifice himself
for Miriam Ainsley--no, Miriam Heyton, as she was now--the Miriam who,
strangely enough, troubled his thoughts but little. Indeed, when he did
think of her, with the remembrance was mixed a kind of amazement that he
had ever loved her; for the illusion had now left him, and he knew that
she had not been worth, at any time, all that she had cost him.

"What a fool I have been!" was the thought, the bitterness of which so
many men have felt. But for Miriam, and the villainy of the man who had
stolen her from him, he might have been still in England, might--who
knows?--in better circumstances, have met the girl at Brown's Buildings.
He would have been free to love her and to tell her so.

With a shake of the head, and a setting of the lips, he tramped on,
every step giving him pain; and at last he neared the town.

It was a small place, with a few scattered 'dobe houses, one of which
bore the sign indicating an inn. Outside the door, with their cigarettes
between their lips, their whips lying beside them, sat and lounged a
group of cowboys. Derrick had made the acquaintance of many of their
kind since the night on which he had checkmated the specimens in the
circus, and he had got on very well with them; for your cowboy is an
acute person, and knows a "man" when he sees him. As Derrick limped up
they stopped talking, and eyed him with narrowed lids.

Derrick saluted them in Spanish fashion, for he had picked up a few
phrases, and one of the men made way for him on the rude bench, greeted
him with a nod, and slid a mug and a bottle of wine towards him. Derrick
drank--it was like nectar in his parched mouth--and the cowboy, with a
grunt of approval, tendered him a cigarette and inquir