here
it started from. The first word I hear from any one anywhere, I'll start
for you."

He looked down for a moment at the disorganized man seated in the thick,
white dust that was still floating lazily around him. Then he turned
abruptly away and resumed his journey.

XXX

For ten seconds Oldham sat as Bob had left him. His hat and eyeglasses
were gone, his usually immaculate irongray hair rumpled, his clothes
covered with dust. A thin stream of blood crept from beneath his
close-clipped moustache. But the most striking result of the encounter,
to one who had known the man, was in the convulsed expression of his
countenance. A close friend would hardly have recognized him. His lips
snarled, his eyes flared, the muscles of his face worked. Ordinarily
repressed and inscrutable, this crisis had thrown him so far off his
balance that, as often happens, he had fallen to the other extreme.
Sniffling and half-sobbing, like a punished schoolboy, he dragged
himself to where his revolver lay forgotten in the dust. Taking as
deliberate aim as his condition permitted, he pulled at the trigger. The
hammer refused to rise, or the cylinder to revolve. Abandoning the
self-cocking feature of the arm, he tried to cock it by hand. The
mechanism grated sullenly against the grit from the road. Oldham worked
frantically to get the hammer to catch. By the time he had succeeded,
his antagonist was out of reach. With a half-scream of baffled rage, he
hurled the now useless weapon in the direction of the young man's
disappearance. Then, as Oldham stood militant in the dusty road, a
change came over him. Little by little the man resumed his old self. A
full minute went by. Save for the quicker breathing, a spectator might
have thought him sunk in reverie. At the end of that time the old,
self-contained, reserved, cynical Oldham stepped from his tracks, and
set methodically to repair damages.

First he searched for and found his glasses, fortunately unbroken. At
the nearest streamlet he washed his face, combed his hair, brushed off
his clothes. The saddle horse browsed not far away. Finally he walked
down the road, picked up the revolver, cleaned it thoroughly of dust,
tested it and slipped it into his pocket. Then he resumed his journey,
outwardly as self-possessed as ever.

Near the upper dam he had another encounter. The dust of some one
approaching warned him some time before the traveller came in sight.
Oldham reined back his