“Once yuh get over into the MacLeod country,” he concluded, “you’ll be all right. Nobody’ll care a cuss who yuh are nor where yuh come from, so long as yuh behave yourself. This red hoss hasn’t got the Circle brand, though he belongs to the outfit, so they won’t ask no fool questions about him. Yuh ought to pick up a job with some uh them Canadian layouts pretty easy.” “Oh, wait a minute,” he exclaimed, when I was again about to mount, and he ran over to an outspread canvas-covered bed. He fumbled among the tumbled quilts a moment and came back to me carrying a broad cartridge-belt, on which a bone-handled Colt swung in its leathern scabbard. “I pretty near forgot this,” he chuckled. “Yuh ain’t heeled, and Lord knows yuh need to be at this stage uh the game. Say, how are yuh off for coin?” “Man alive!” I cried—and I meant it, “you’ve done more for me now than I can repay in a thousand years. I don’t need money.” “Oh, yes, yuh do,” he returned, unruffled. “A dollar or two’ll come mighty handy when yuh hit MacLeod, or wherever yuh land. I ain’t goin’ to make yuh rich. Here, and good luck to yuh.” He pressed a ten-dollar gold piece upon me. Then we shook hands as brothers at parting, and I rode out of the Circle camp on a high-stepping horse, with the Big Dipper and the North Star to guide me to the Canada line. CHAPTER VI—SLOWFOOT GEORGE I retain some vivid impressions of that night ride. A mile or two from the Circle tents I crossed the Teton River, then just receding from the June rise, and near swimming deep. After that I came out upon a great spread of bench-land, dotted with silent prairie-dog towns. Here and there a lone butte rose pinnacle-like out of the flatness. In all my short life I had never known what it was to be beyond sound of a human voice, to be utterly alone. That night was my first taste of it, and to my unaccustomed ears the patter of my horse’s hoofs seemed to be echoing up from a sounding-board, and the jingle of the bit chains rang like a bell, so profound was the quiet. I know of nothing that compares with the plains for pure loneliness, unless it be the deserted streets of a city at four in the morning—or the hushed, ghostly woods of the North, which I was yet to know. Each hollow into which I dipped reeked of mysterious possibilities. Every moon-bathed rise of land gave me a vague feeling that something sinister, some incomprehensible evil, lay in wait upon the farther side. Whatever of superstition lay dormant in my make-up was all agog that night; my environment was having its will of me. I know now that my nerves were all a-jangle. But what would you? The dark brings its subtle, threatening atmosphere to bear on braver men than I. For aught I knew there might be a price on my head. Certainly I was a fugitive, and flight breeds groundless, unreasoning fears.