county still giving me the laugh over that case."

The next day Bassett hired a quiet horse, rolled in his raincoat two
days' supply of food, strapped it to the cantle of his saddle, and rode
into the mountains. He had not ridden for years, and at the end of the
first hour he began to realize that he was in for a bad time. By noon
he was so sore that he could hardly get out of the saddle, and so stiff
that once out, he could barely get back again. All morning the horse
had climbed, twisting back and forth on a narrow canyon trail, grunting
occasionally, as is the way of a horse on a steep grade. All morning
they had followed a roaring mountain stream, descending in small
cataracts from the ice fields far above. And all morning Bassett had
been mentally following that trail as it had been ridden ten years
ago by a boy maddened with fear and drink, who drove his horse forward
through the night and the blizzard, with no objective and no hope.

He found it practically impossible to connect this frenzied fugitive
with the quiet man in his office chair at Haverly, the man who was or
was not Judson Clark. He lay on a bank at noon and faced the situation
squarely, while his horse, hobbled, grazed with grotesque little forward
jumps in an upland meadow. Either Dick Livingstone was Clark, or he
was the unknown occasional visitor at the Livingstone Ranch. If he
were Clark, and if that could be proved, there were two courses open to
Bassett. He could denounce him to the authorities and then spring
the big story of his career. Or he could let things stand. From a
professional standpoint the first course attracted him, as a man he
began to hate it. The last few days had shed a new light on Judson
Clark. He had been immensely popular; there were men in the town who
told about trying to save him from himself. He had been extravagant, but
he had also been generous. He had been "a good kid," until liberty and
money got hold of him. There had been more than one man in the sheriff's
posse who hadn't wanted to find him.

He was tempted to turn back. The mountains surrounded him, somber and
majestically still. They made him feel infinitely small and rather
impertinent, as though he had come to penetrate the secrets they never
yielded. He had almost to fight a conviction that they were hostile.

After an hour or so he determined to go on. Let them throw him over a
gorge if they so determined. He got up, grunting, and leading the horse
bes