"Anywhere you like, my dear chap, so that it's neither in Arizona or New Mexico. I want to stop here myself, and the place isn't big enough for us both. You'll be a valuable acquisition to any community, and you can turn your talent to showing up the life here. You are right on the inside track. Now I won't ask you to promise to go. But I'll be round to see that you do." He held the door open for the Texan woman and the parson to go out. Then he followed, closing it behind him. Two days later Stone left the town. He took the train for California, and his wife and children went with him. He was a rich man by many an evil means, and it was no real hardship that had been worked him, as Cairness well knew. The Lawton woman had heard of an officer's family at Grant, which was in need of a cook, and had gone there. "And now," said the Reverend Taylor, fingering the lock of hair over the little Reverend's right ear, as that wise little owl considered with uncertain approval a whistle rattle Cairness had bought for him, "and now what are you going to do?" Cairness stood up, ran his hands into his pockets, and going over to the window looked down at the geraniums as he had done once, long before. "I am going back to my ranch on the reservation," he said measuredly. "Cairness," said the parson, fixing his eyes upon the back of the bent head, as if they were trying to see through into the impenetrable brain beneath, "are you going to spend the rest of your life at this sort of thing?" "I don't know," Cairness answered, with a lightness that was anything but cheering. "You are too good for it." "I am certainly not good enough for anything else." He began to whistle, but it was not a success, and he stopped. "See here," insisted Taylor; "turn round here and answer me." Cairness continued to stand with his head down, looking at the geraniums. The parson was wiser than his wife in that he knew when it was of no use to insist. "What's keeping you around here, anyway? You ought to have gotten out when you left the service--and you half meant to then. What is it?" Cairness raised his shoulders. "My mines," he said, after a while. The Reverend Taylor did not believe that, but he let it go. "Well," he said more easily, "you've accomplished the thing you set out to do, anyway." "One thing," muttered Cairness. "Eh?" the parson was not sure he had heard. "Just nothing," Cairness laughed shortly, and breaking off one of the treasured geranium blossoms, stuck it in a buttonhole of his flannel shirt. "I heard you," said the little man; "what's the other?"--"Oh, I dare say I'll fail on that," he answered indifferently, and taking up his sombrero went out to saddle his horse. XXI