He sat down upon the edge of the station platform and thought it out deliberately. Since it would be hours before the tracks could be cleared and the rail journey resumed, what was to prevent him from taking an immediate and delightful plunge into the region of the heart-stirring recollections? Doubtless old Jason Debbleby was at this moment sitting on the door-step of his lonely ranch-house in the Pigskin foot-hills, smoking his corn-cob pipe and, quite possibly, wondering what had become of the boy whom he had taught to "rope down" and saddle and ride. Blount estimated the distance as he remembered it. With a hired horse he might reach Debbleby's by late bedtime; and after a night spent with the old ranchman he could ride on across the big mesa to the capital. Another ineffectual attempt to find out how soon the relief train from the capital might be expected decided Blount. Arranging with the Pullman conductor to have his hand-luggage left in Gantry's office at the capital, the man in search of his boyhood crossed quickly to a livery-stable opposite the station, bargained for a saddle-horse, borrowed a poncho and a pair of leggings, and prepared to break violently, for the moment at least, with all the civilized traditions. He would go and see Debbleby--drop in upon the old horse-breeder without warning, and thus get his first revivified impression of the homeland unmixed with any of the disappointing changes which were doubtless awaiting him at the real journey's end. Now it chanced that the livery-stable was an adjunct to the single hotel in the small sawmill town, and as Blount was mounting to ride he saw the thin-faced man, whom the ranchman, Griggs, had named for him, standing on the porch of the hotel in earnest talk with three others who, from their appearance, might have figured either as "timber jacks" or cowboys. Blount was on the point of recognizing his companion of the Pullman smoking-compartment as he rode past the hotel to take the trail to the northward, but a curious conviction that the gentleman with the bird-of-prey eyes was making him the subject of the earnest talk with the three men of doubtful occupation restrained him. A moment later, when he looked back from the crossing of the railroad track, he saw that all four of the men on the porch were watching him. This he saw; and if the backward glance had been prolonged for a single instant he might also have seen a big, barrel-bodied man with a red face stumbling out of the side door of the shack hotel to make vigorous and commanding signals to stop him. But this he missed.