"Say!" cried Douglas in an outraged voice. "What's all this talk you've been giving me for a year about whiskey and women and horses?" Charleton did not hear him. "Charleton Falkner, Jr.!" he was murmuring over an unlighted cigarette. It seemed a very long time before they were admitted to the baby and breakfast. Douglas was entirely unimpressed by the squirming red morsel of humanity that Little Marion proudly brought into the kitchen for their inspection. But Charleton was maudlin with admiration. It was, it seemed, easily the first child ever born in Lost Chief, not excepting Little Marion who had been a wonderful baby herself. Douglas listened, eating his breakfast grimly the while, filled with an embarrassed consternation at last beholding his mentor with, as Peter had said, his outer skin off. This, then, was what Charleton really wanted; not whiskey, or promiscuous women, or wild horses, or Omar Khayham. What he wanted was a son, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, to carry on his name. And yet what had Charleton ever done to that name except to besmirch it? For Douglas now in his heart had no illusions about the proper nomenclature for his mentor's mysterious little deals. "Charleton," he demanded suddenly, "do you want the kid to grow up to be just like you?" Charleton looked at Douglas in astonishment. "Like me? Listen, Doug, old-timer, I'm going to spend the rest of my life licking out of him anything I see in him like me!" Douglas gave up in despair and went out to finish the chores. It was a disjointed day, of course. In the afternoon Charleton went to a choice gathering of spirits at the post-office; and Douglas, feeling particularly lonely and unsettled, rode up the south trail after three of Charleton's young mules which had strayed. He felt somehow that, with the dereliction of Charleton, the last hold he had on reality had gone. CHAPTER VII THE POST-OFFICE CONFERENCE "Ride with your finger on the trigger--but smile before you shoot." --_Sheriff Frank Day_. Douglas had no luck at all on his mule hunt. And as if to add to his discomfort, while climbing down the trail from the cemetery, he saw Judith on Buster, accompanied by the leaping Wolf Cub, overtake Scott Parsons and saw them race toward the post-office. Twilight came on, with the mud of the trail stiffening in the frosty air. An overpowering sense of loneliness urged Douglas across the valley and brought him to pause beside the Rodman corral. He dismounted at the buck fence and stood for a moment in the shadow of the Moose, wondering why he had stopped here. He had stood thus but a few moments when two riders came up the trail. They trotted into the door-yard. "I don't think I want to dance, after all, Scott," said Judith's voice. "What harm is there in it?" demanded Scott. "I make it a point never to go in here except when Inez is alone." "I suppose you're afraid to meet Doug!" exclaimed Scott. "He's here half the time."