Up grades, through cañons, the special roared its way. At every stop telegrams zitted ahead, and hours before the train was due an automobile waited by the depot platform at Colt. Daniel Lenox heeded not the enthusiastic train-men who held watches and calculated the broken record as brakes screamed down and the race by rail ended. Bag in hand, he strode across the cinder platform and entered the waiting automobile, without a single glance for the group that looked at him wonderingly. "You know the way to the Thorpe Ranch?" he asked the driver of the car. "Like a book!" "Can you drive all night?" "I can." "Good! We must be there as early to-morrow as possible." And ten minutes before noon the next day the heavy-eyed driver threw out his clutch and slowed the car to a stop before the S Bar S ranch house. Saddled horses were there, a score of them standing with bridle reins down. Sounds of lifted voices came from the house, quickly lulled as an exclamation turned attention on the arrival. From the ample door came a figure--tall and lean, well poised, shoulders square, feet firm on the ground. Pale, true, but surely returning strength was evidenced in his very bearing. VB's lips moved. His father, halfway to him, stopped. "Dad!" "Am I on time?" queried the older man. "_Dad!_" With a cry the boy was up on him, grasping both hands in his. "I didn't--dare hope you'd want--Dad, it makes me so--" The other looked almost fiercely into the boy's face, clinging to the hands that clutched his, shaking them tremblingly now and then. The penetrating blue eyes searched out every line in the boy's countenance, and the look in them grew to be such as VB had never seen before. "Did you think I'd stay back there in New York and let you do all this alone? Did you think I wouldn't come on, in time if I could, and tell you how ashamed I am to have ever doubted you, my own blood, how mean a thing was that which I thought was faith?" His gaze went from VB to Gail, coming toward him clad all in simple white, flushing slightly as she extended her hand. He turned to her, took the hand, and looked deep into her big eyes. He tried to speak, but words would not come and he shook his head to drive back the choking emotion. "Bless you!" he finally muttered. "Bless you both. You're a man--Danny. And you--" His voice failed again and he could only remain mute, stroking the girl's hand. Then Jed came up and greeted the newcomer silently, a bit grimly, as though he had just forgiven him something. "Come over here, you three," said VB, and led them over to where two horses stood together. One was the bay the boy had ridden that afternoon he charged down the ridge to make the great stallion his, and beside him, towering, head up, alert, regally self-conscious, stood the Captain. The bay bore VB's saddle. On the Captain's back perched one of smaller tree, silver mounted and hand tooled, with stirrups that were much too short for a man.