Somehow in lifting the wooden pin of the cedar gate, the sense came over him again of the quality of the man whom he had known so well--just a pin of manzanito to hold the gate, but there was an art about the way the knots were cut. The mare came up to him nodding and stepping high with her front feet. She seemed to say that this conspiracy to keep her in the dark had gone far enough; that the time had come for her to know what was going on. ‘... And you’re to be mine, Mamie--from now on!’ Elbert muttered. He had been trying to get used to it for days. ‘What do you think about that? Not very much, I guess.... Not much more than Mort Cotton did, probably.’ The mare wasn’t telling. She was friendly, however, nudging under the arm, nosing at his hands and pockets. ‘Oh, I know what you want--a piece of cake.’ He went back to the cabin. The strangest feeling came over him in the shadows. This was his place to come and go in, but the fact was slow to settle in him. He missed his old friend and didn’t feel quite up to the reality of possession. One man’s whole life--these things represented--and a mare that couldn’t be bought.... There might have been some hope, the doctor had repeatedly suggested, if Mr. Leadley could have been moved down to San Forenso, but the old man had refused to hear to that. He had to come to his own conclusion, apparently. Days of just sitting around--Mort Cotton there, the doctor riding up to the claim every day--about as hard days as the young man had lived through so far. * * * * * The last chest was locked, the last cabinet. Elbert glanced around before shutting and padlocking the outer door of the cabin--a wonder passing through him about sometime coming back--with Bart.... In a sense, this meant his start for Sonora right now. Of course, there were matters to close up in San Forenso--affairs of the Dry Cache, of banks, papers and probate, but Mamie was now to be ridden down trail and it was like the beginning of a new life. From the doorway, he studied the mare’s sculptured head. There she stood, as if listening to sounds which she alone could detect. Practically his first experience in saddling anything but the wooden horse. The horses he had failed to tarry on at Heaslep’s had been saddled by others--even old Chester on that unforgettable day. He knew the straps and cinches--part of his recent business, and Mamie wasn’t too restive, so far. Funny, Elbert thought, that he should have sold that Pitcairn stock-saddle to himself, after all. ‘Thirty-eight pounds,’ he muttered.