“I missed you, Jeff,” she declared. “Why, I wanted you there more than anybody else. And I wanted to wait till someone could go for you. But nobody’d seen you, and they didn’t know where you were--What was the matter, Jeff?” “I--I had business to attend to,” he explained. “Business! And you my best, best friend----” The train was close. Voices began to summon her back to the wedding-party. Blandy leaned down to her. “Dear little Polly,” he said huskily, “your old side-pardner wishes you all the luck that’s in the world.” Then she was gone again. She smiled back at him from the steps of the car, and answered the chorus of farewells that was shouted up to her. The engine-bell clanged, the train moved. Patton sprang to the girl’s side amid a shower of rice. There was more shouting, which was answered from the car platform, and the west-bound pulled out, the green lights on the rear of the last coach glowing like the eyes of a serpent. Blandy lifted a hand to his breast, then to his throat, then to his eyes. The group of wedding guests gone, and the depot platform dark, he crossed the railroad track, walking a little uncertainly. Out in the blackness, among the sage-brush, something was moving about--an animal. He went up to it, untied a rope, spoke a word of command, and started off northward--away from the town into the desert. * * * * * Jeff Blandy, staggering across the last mile of his journey, directed his way over the railroad track to Conley’s restaurant. The dust of many days and nights was upon him, powdering hair and clothes to the colour of his grey hat. The weariness of trudging over yielding and uneven ground was in his long legs and in the stoop of his shoulders. And the leathern sallow of his face wore a fresh gloss of vivid red that was like the reflection of a torch-flame. Yet in his eyes--as brown and big and appealingly honest as the eyes of a great, friendly dog--was a gleam that neither the sand-laden winds nor the scorching sun had dulled. And there was a smile lurking among the long bristles at the corners of his wide mouth. Entering the restaurant, he found it unchanged, though a year had passed since he had left Searles. There were the two oilcloth-covered tables that reached from end to end of the room, and the counter, with its cash-register. But no one was on hand to take his order. Stiffly, he let himself down upon a chair at one end of the first table. Then, leaning back and dropping his hat to the floor at his side, he picked up a knife and rang a sharp summons on the rim of an empty glass. The door into the kitchen swung open to admit a young man in shirt-sleeves and soiled apron,--a short, thick-set young man with the curly flaxen hair, full blue eyes and apple-red cheeks of a boy doll. He was carrying a pitcher of water.