He stood on the rear platform and watched a horseman jogging over the sandy plain to the west, picturing his ride from the junction to some lonely ranch on a distant river bottom. He would have the week's mail in a bag back of the saddle, and a stock of tobacco. He would reach the place after dark, perhaps, from sheer _ennui_, shooting at a coyote or two along the way. He knew that rider's life, the days of it and the nights, and all of good or ill that might ever betake him. It was well, he thought, to dare a bigger life, though he waved a friendly greeting to the unconscious horseman, jogging at the head of his train of dust. He flung a tender glance at the diminished junction, now a low, dull blur on the level horizon, and went into the car. For the moment the Pullman had no other occupant but himself and Mrs. Laithe, and she was sleeping, he thought; but her eyes opened as he would have passed her seat. She had replaced the toque with a brown cap he knew, and as she smiled up at him she seemed again almost the familiar godmother of his fairy tale. He passed on, however, after a meaningless word or two and, sprawling in another section, surrendered himself to the troubled pretentiousness of the Pullman school of decoration. He had left the lady grateful for his going. She was in no mood for that artless lyric chant of youth in which he was so adept. Her brother that morning had accused her of waning enthusiasm for her protege. "I believe you're funking, Nell," he had said shrewdly. "You're discovering that mountain slumming is different from the city kind." But she had protested that no discerning person of ordinary humanity could have done less for the prisoned youth. "Of course"--and she had sighed--"he's a mere bundle of untried eagerness, and we're responsible, in a way, for Heaven knows what, but we had to do it, didn't we?" "Not 'we' had to! _You_ had to. It's all yours, Nell--the credit and the glory and all the rest. I prefer to get up my own responsibilities, if you don't mind." "But you agreed with me--you _did_--you advised when I asked you--it's perfectly plain--you said, 'Of course!'"--But the train moved off in the midst of his laugh at this, and he had doffed his hat to her with a mocking gesture of freehanded relinquishment. Now, as she closed her eyes again, her memory dived for some fairy tale or fragment of mythology in which an unsuspecting humanitarian rescued an insignificant woods thing, only to have it change on the instant into a creature troublesome in more ways than one. She was certain some primitive fabulist had foreseen this complication, but her mind was weary and shadowed, and the historic solution evaded her. "Mountain slumming" was truly more exigent than the town sort.