The following Saturday evening Ramon was again riding across the _mesa_, clad in his dirty hunting clothes, with his shotgun hung in the cinches of his saddle. At the start he had been undecided where he was going. Tormented by desire and bitter over the poverty which stood between him and fulfilment, he had flung the saddle on his mare and ridden away, feeling none of the old interest in the mountains, but impelled by a great need to escape the town with all its cruel spurs and resistances. Already the rhythm of his pony’s lope and the steady beat of the breeze in his face had calmed and refreshed him. The bitter, exhausting thoughts that had been plucking at his mind gave way to the idle procession of sensations, as they tend always to do when a man escapes the artificial existence of towns into the natural, animal one of the outdoors. He began to respond to the deep appeal which the road, the sense of going somewhere, always had for him. For he came of a race of wanderers. His forbears had been restless men to cross an ocean and most of a continent in search of homes. He was bred to a life of wandering and adventure. Long pent-up days in town always made him restless, and the feel of a horse under him and of distance to be overcome never failed to give him a sense of well-being. Crossing a little _arroyo_, he saw a covey of the blue desert quail with their white crests erect, darting among the rocks and cactus on the hillside. It was still the close season, but he never thought of that. In an instant he was all hunter, like a good dog in sight of game. He slipped from his horse, letting the reins fall to the ground, and went running up the rocky slope, cleverly using every bit of cover until he came within range. At the first shot he killed three of the birds, and got another as they rose and whirred over the hill top. He gathered them up quickly, stepping on the head of a wounded one, and stuffed them into his pockets. He was grinning, now, and happy. The bit of excitement had washed from his mind for the time being the last vestige of worry. He lit a cigarette and lay on his back to smoke it, stretching out his legs luxuriously, watching the serene gyrations of a buzzard. When he had extracted the last possible puff from the tobacco, he went back to his horse and rode on toward Archulera’s ranch, feeling a keen interest in the coarse but substantial supper which he knew the old man would give him.