Ten minutes later he added: "Especially when you're afraid of yourself and daren't hunt out a test."

Another time they talked of the man that he had been before he came to Colt. They were riding the hills, the Captain snuggling close to the pinto pony Jed rode. The sun poured its light down on the white land.

Far away, over on the divide, they could see huge spirals of snow picked up by the wind and carried along countless miles, finally to be blasted into veils of silver dust that melted away into distance. An eagle flapped majestically to a perch on a scrub cedar across the gulch; a dozen deer left off their browsing, watched the approach of the riders a moment, and then bounded easily away. The sharp air set their blood running high, and it was good to live.

"Ain't this a good place, VB?" Jed asked, turning his eyes away from a snow-capped crag that thrust into the heavens fifty miles to the east.

VB slapped the Captain's neck gladly. "I never saw a finer, Jed!" he cried. "If those people back in New York could only get the _feel_ of this country! You bet if they once did, it would empty that d.i.n.ky little island."

"You never want to go back?" the older man ventured.

VB did not answer for a long time. When he did he said: "Some day I shall go back, Jed, but not to stay. I will not go back, either, until I've come to be as good and as strong a man as the Captain is a good and strong horse. That's something to set up as a goal, isn't it? But I mean every word. When I left the city I was--nothing. When I go back I want to be everything that a man should be--as this old fellow is everything that a horse should be."

He leaned forward and pulled the Captain's ears fondly, while the stallion champed the bit and lifted his forefeet high in play. VB straightened then, and looked dreamily ahead.

"I hope that time will come before a man there gets to the end of things. He was hard with me, my father, Jed--mighty hard. But I know he was right. Perhaps I'm not doing all I could for his comfort, perhaps I'm making a bad gamble, but when I go back I want to be as I believe every man can be--at some time in his life."

He turned his eyes on the little, huddled figure that rode at his side.

"Then, when I've seen New York once more, with all its artificiality and dishonest motives and its unrealities--from the painted faces of its women to its very reasons for living and doing--I'll come back here, Jed; back to the Captain and to the hills.

"I've seen the other! Oh, I've seen it, not from the ground up, but from the ground down! I've gone to the very subcellars of rottenness--and there's nothing to attract. But here there's a bigness, a freedom, an incentive to be real that you won't find in places where men huddle together and lie and cheat and scheme!"

They returned to the ranch in late afternoon and found that a pa.s.sing cowboy had left mail for them--papers and circulars--and a picture postal card. VB had picked up the bundle of mail first, and for a long time he gazed at the gaudy colorings of that card. Palm trees, faultlessly kept lawns, a huge, rambling building set back from the road that formed a foreground, and a glimpse of a superblue Pacific in the distance. He held it in his fingers and took in every detail. Then, with a queer little feeling about his middle, he turned it over. A small hand--he remembered just how firm the fingers were that held the pen--had written:

+--------------------------+

Mr. VB

Ranger, Colorado

+--------------------------+

And across the correspondence section of the card was inscribed this:

Give my very best regards to the Captain and to Mr. Avery. Home early in April.

He read the message again and again, looking curiously at the way she had formed the letters. Then he muttered:

"Why didn't she send it to Jed--or to the Captain?"

When Jed came into the cabin VB asked him, as though it were a matter of great concern:

"Where's that calendar we had around here?"

That night the young fellow lay awake long hours. The thirst had come again. Not so ravishing as it used to be, not inspiring all the old terror, but still it was there, and as it tugged at his throat and teased from every fiber of his being, he thought of Gail Thorpe--and tossed uneasily.

"Why?" he asked himself. "Why is it that the thirst calls so loudly when I think of that girl?"

He could not answer, and suddenly the query seemed so portentous that he sat up in bed, prying the darkness with his eyes, as though to find a solution of the enigma there. And his wandering mind, circling and doubling and shooting out in crazy directions, settled back on the Captain, and with it the hurt of his jumping nerves became dulled.

He closed his eyes, picturing the great stallion as he had first seen him, standing there on a little rim-rock protecting his band of mares, watching with regal scorn the approach of his adversary.

"And his spirit didn't break," VB muttered. "It's all there, just as sound as it ever was--but it's standing for different things. It's no longer defiance--it's love."

When March was well on its way Jed and VB drove to Ranger for more supplies. The Captain had been turned into the lower pasture, and followed them as far as he could. When stopped by the fence he stood looking after them inquiringly, and when they topped a little swell in the road, ready to drop out of sight, a long-drawn neighing came from him.

"Poor Captain!" muttered VB. "It's like going away from a home--to leave him."

"You're foolish!" snorted Jed. Later he said sharply: "No, you ain't, either!"

When they reached Ranger three cowboys were shooting at a tin can out on the flat, and before entering the store they stopped to watch. A man came out of the saloon and walked swiftly toward the buildings along the road. As he approached both recognized Rhues.

"Better come in," said Jed, moving toward the door.

"Wait!"

With apparent carelessness VB lounged against a post that supported the wooden awning. Rhues slowed his pace a trifle as he saw who the men were, and VB could see his mouth draw into an expression of nasty hate as he pa.s.sed close and entered the blacksmith shop. No further sign of recognition had pa.s.sed between them.

When the trading was finished and they walked back toward the corral Jed remarked uneasily: "I don't feel right--havin' you around Rhues, VB. He's bound to try to get you some time. I know his breed. He'll never forget th' beatin' you give him, an' th' first time he sees an openin' he'll try for you. Men like him lives just to settle one big grudge--nothin' else counts."

VB raised a hand to his side and gripped the forty-five that was slung in a shoulder holster under his shirt.

"I know it, Jed. I hate to pack this gun--makes me feel like a yellow dog or a Broadway cow-puncher--I don't know which. But I know he means business. I don't want to let him think I'd step an inch out of his way, though; that's why I didn't go into the store."

He lowered his voice and went on: "Jed, I wouldn't say a word that would send the worst man in the world into trouble with the law unless I was absolutely certain. I've never mentioned it even to you--but I think when Kelly was killed the man who did that shooting believed he was getting me."

Jed spat lingeringly.

"VB, I've thought so, too," he said.

They reached the ranch the next afternoon, greeted by a shrilling from the Captain that endured from the time they came in sight until VB was beside him.

"Captain," the boy whispered, rubbing the velvety nose, "making them respect you is worth having a gunman on my trail--it is."

CHAPTER XVII

Great Moments

They were a long way from camp, and night impended.

"We won't go back," Jed decided. "We'll go on over to th' S Bar S an'

put up for th' night."

VB said nothing, but of a sudden his heart commenced to hammer away so l.u.s.tily that the pulse in the back of his neck felt like blows from metal.

It was beyond the middle of April, and he knew that Gail must have returned from the coast; for days he had been wondering when he would see her again, had been itching to ask questions of every chance pa.s.ser who might know of her return. Yet that unaccountable diffidence had kept him from mentioning it even to Jed. Now, though, that he was to go for himself, that he was to see her--