Two years later Stratton decided to give up the fight and follow them. During the winter before the war he sold out for a handsome figure, spent several months looking over new ground, and finally located and bought the Shoe-Bar outfit. The deal was hurried through because of his determination to enlist. Indeed, he would probably not have purchased at all had not the new outfit, even to his hasty inspection, seemed to be so unusual a bargain and so exactly what he wanted. But buy he did, placed Joe Bloss, a reliable and experienced cattleman who had been with him for years, in charge, and departed. From that moment he had never once set eyes on the Shoe-Bar. Bloss wrote frequent and painstaking reports which seemed to indicate that everything was going well. But all through the long and tedious journey ending at the little Arizona way-station, Stratton fumed and fretted and wondered. Even if Joe had failed to see his name amongst the missing, what must he have thought of his interminable silence? All through Buck's brief training and the longer interval overseas, the foreman's letters had come with fair regularity and been answered promptly and in detail. What had Bloss done when the break came? What had he been doing ever since? A fresh wave of troubled curiosity sent Stratton swinging briskly across the street. Keeping inside the long hitching-rack, he crossed the sagging porch and stepped through the open door into the store. For a moment he thought it empty. Then a chair scraped, and over in one corner a short, stout, grizzled man dropped his feet from the window-sill and shuffled forward, yawning. "Wal! Wal!" he mumbled, his faded, sleep-dazed eyes taking in Buck's bag. "Train come in? Reckon I must of been dozin' a mite." "Looks to me like the whole place was taking an afternoon nap," smiled Stratton. "Not much doing this time of day, I expect." "You said it," yawned the stout man, supporting himself against the rough pine counter. "Things is liable to brisk up in a hour or two, though, when the boys begin to drift in. Stranger around these parts, ain't yuh?" he added curiously. For a tiny space Buck hesitated. Then, moved by an involuntary impulse he did not even pause to analyze, he shrugged his shoulders slightly. "I was out at the Shoe-Bar a couple of times about two years ago," he answered. "Haven't been around here since." "The Shoe-Bar? Huh?" Pop Daggett looked interested. "You don't say so! Funny I don't recollect yore face." "Not so very. I only passed through here to take the train." "That was it, eh? Two years ago must of been about the time the outfit was bought by that Stratton feller from Texas. Yuh know him well?" "Joe Bloss, the foreman, was a friend of mine," evaded Stratton. "He's the one I stopped off now to see."