she had
waited and watched for him through all those years of wandering, while
he, bitter and unrelenting, and believing that she was King's wife, had
refused to listen for her voice on Sunday evenings. If she had kept her
promise, then on the trail, in canons dark and deathly still, on the
moonlit sand of the Painted Desert, on the high divides of the Needle
Range, her thought had been winged toward him in song--and he had not
listened.

His thought turned now, for the first time, toward the great city, which
was to him a savage jungle of unknown things, a web of wire, a maze of
streets, a swirling flood of human beings, of interest now merely and
solely because Mary had gone to live therein. "I'm due to make another
trip East," he said to himself with a grim straightening of the lips.

It was mighty serious business. To take Kintuck and hit the trail for
the Kalispels over a thousand miles of mountain and plain, was simple,
but to thrust himself amid the mad rush of a great city made his bold
heart quail. Money was a minor consideration in the hills, but in the
city it was a matter of life and death. Money he must now have, and as
he could not borrow or steal it, it must be earned. In a month his wages
would amount to one hundred dollars, but that was too slow. He saw no
other way, however, so set his teeth and prepared to go on with the
"fool business" of guarding the treasure wagon of the Express Company.

His mind reverted often to the cowboy tournament which was about to come
off, after hanging fire for a month, during which Grassi wrestled with
the problem of how to hold a bullfight in opposition to the laws of the
State. "If I could whirl in and catch one of those purses," thought
Mose, "I could leave at the end of August. If I don't I must hang on
till the first of October."

He determined to enter for the roping contest and for the cowboy race
and the revolver practice. Marshal Haney was delighted. "I'll attend to
the business, but the entrance fees will be about twenty dollars."

This staggered Mose. It meant an expenditure of nearly one fourth his
month's pay in entrance fees, not to speak of the expense of keeping
Kintuck, for the old horse had to go into training and be grain-fed as
well. However, he was too confident of winning to hesitate. He drew on
his wages, and took a day off to fetch Kintuck, whom he found fat and
hearty and very dirty.

The boys at the Reynolds ranch were willing to bet on M