Rathburn raised his pistol and took careful aim. His eye was steady and his hand did not shake. Two feet away the dog had come to a sudden halt. Something in the eye or in the leveled weapon had stayed his feet. He whined, then barked, his eyes all the while wistfully demanding an explanation. Suddenly, his gaze still fixed on his master's face, he rose upright on his haunches and held before him two little dangling paws. There was a silence, followed by a muttered oath, as the pistol dropped to the ground. "Confound my babyishness!" snarled Rathburn, stooping and pocketing his weapon. "One would think I'd never seen a gun before!" This was on Sunday. On Monday Rathburn took the dog far up the trail. "Want a dog?" he said to the low-browed, unkempt man sitting at the door of a squat cabin. "Well, I don't. I ain't buyin' dogs these days." "Yer don't have ter buy this one," observed Rathburn meaningly. The other glanced up with sharp eyes. "Humph! Bite?" he snapped. Rathburn shook his head. "Sick of him," he returned laconically. "Like his room better'n his company." "Humph!" grunted the other. Then to the dog: "Come here, sir, an' let's have a look at ye!" Five minutes later Rathburn strode down the trail alone, while behind him, on the other side of the fast-shut cabin door, barked and scratched a frantic little yellow dog. Tuesday night, when Rathburn came home, the first sound that greeted him was a joyous bark, as a quivering, eager little creature leaped upon him from out of the dark. On Wednesday Stub trotted into town at Rathburn's heels, and all the way down the straggling street he looked neither to the right nor to the left, so fearful did he seem that the two great boots he was following should in some way slip from his sight. And yet, vigilant as he was, the door of Swaney's saloon got somehow between and left him on one side barking and whining and running like mad about the room, while on the other his master stood jingling the two pieces of silver in his pocket--the price Mike Swaney had paid for his new dog. Halfway up the mountain-side Rathburn was still chuckling, still jingling his coins. "When a man pays money," he was saying aloud, as he squared his shoulders and looked across the valley at the setting sun, "when a man pays money he watches out. I reckon Stub has gone fer good, sure thing, this time!" And yet--long before dawn there came a whine and a gentle scratch at his cabin door; and although four times the dog was returned to his new owner, four times he escaped and nosed the long trail that led to the cabin on the mountain-side. After Stub's fourth desertion the saloon-keeper refused to take him again, and for a week the dog lay unmolested in his old place in the sun outside the cabin door, or dozed before the fireplace at night. Then Rathburn bestirred himself and made one last effort, taking the dog quite over the mountain and leaving him tied to a tree.