The visitor was ravenous and bolted the beef in hunks. Lafe judged that he had walked into camp, but refrained from asking why, although the man is poor indeed who cannot obtain a horse to ride in that country. Bedding was scarce, for they were traveling light, and the best that Johnson could offer was that he should double up with the Chinaman. Their guest appeared no whit abashed by the prospect. "Well, me for the hay," he said at once. "I'm all in. Lordy, hark to my joints creak. I bet I've footed it a million miles through the sand, Mr. Johnson. Your name's Johnson, ain't it? Mine's Wilkins. Say, if this here Chink snores, you'll be burying a cook in the morning, sure as you're alive." They headed for the Border at daybreak. It was a long thirty miles, and Lafe impressed a horse and the injured man's saddle for Wilkins' use. He noted that Wilkins' overalls and shirt were trying to forsake him and that his toes were taking the air, so when he perceived Charlie measuring him with a comparative eye, in which lurked a gleam of satisfaction, he sent the cook sharply about his business. Lafe held that superiority of race should ever be maintained. For the most part they rode in silence, as men do at the beginning of day. Their eyes were heavy with sleep. Wilkins seemed sullen and gave no explanation of his presence in that region. He sat stiffly erect in the saddle with his right arm hanging straight at his side. A cowboy or a native westerner crooks his elbows and lets them jog. "He's a soldier," Lafe concluded, and because he entertained an undefined contempt for soldiers, he trotted ten yards ahead of his guest throughout the morning. The sun was high when they sighted a white stone monument on a ridge below the Huachucas. A wire fence ran past it. They could see it stretch for miles and miles in a straight line. On their side of the fence was Mexico. Beyond lay the United States. They reached a gate. Johnson got down and held it open for his men to pass through. Wilkins stopped and remained a dozen yards within the Mexican Border. "I don't reckon I'll go on with you," said he; "I'll just stick around here for a spell. Here's your horse, Mr. Johnson. Much obliged. He's sure some horse." "All right," Lafe answered, and ordered one of his men to throw the horse in with the saddle bunch, which they were driving loosely ahead of them. It struck him as curious that a man should voluntarily go afoot in that unsettled mountain country, but he never abandoned the tenet that a man's business is his own. Consequently he showed no surprise, nor did his men, but they moved off northward, leaving Wilkins gazing after them from the far side of the fence. "Look!" said a cowboy. "What's that girl doing here?"