He kept his face to the window on the opposite side of the car when the train hauled up at Big Sandy station. Dawn was breaking when the Fort Benton stop came. Beyond Fort Benton Robin breathed easier. Once the train passed Great Falls and bore up into the foothills of the Rockies he shook off his wariness and began to view the country with interest. He was in a new country already and the lure of the unknown began to exert its spell. Robin was for the coast, the far Pacific which he had never seen. He had little of the landsman’s curiosity about the sea, but he knew that no one would dream of a cow-puncher with a killing behind him planting his stakes on Puget Sound. He had bought a ticket on the train. As that read, Helena was his destination. Helena was at once the state capital and the winter rendezvous and residence of many cattlemen, Sutherland among them. On any street corner he might meet a man he knew. So Robin kept on to Butte. He could make a detour and get back on the main line at a junction west of the continental divide. Thus he avoided a stop in the last place where he might be recognized. Twelve hours later he was forging along the Hell Gate river, the Rockies behind him, the world ahead of him, a ticket to Seattle and three hundred dollars in his pocket. The sun blazed in the car windows. The valley beside the track, the hills, the farther higher mountains glittered with frost and snow. Robin with his nose to a pane reflected that it might be worse. They might be burying him instead of Shining Mark. And when a man died he was a long time dead. Thus he comforted himself as the train rolled west. A porter sonorously announcing luncheon reminded Robin that hunger could be appeased in the dining car. He had eaten coffee and hot cakes early that morning at a chophouse in Silver Bow. He brushed his hair and followed the porter. In the second Pullman to the rear he brought up in the doorway with a start. Three seats ahead, facing him wide-eyed with surprise, sat May Sutherland. A broad pair of shoulders surmounted by a thick red neck informed him that Adam Sutherland was her vis-a-vis. For a moment Robin’s eyes met the girl’s inquiring stare. Then he swung on his heel and went back to his seat. The world was too small. There would be no food for him in that dining car. He did not dare run the gauntlet. For an hour Robin chafed in his seat. Here were both disturbance and danger. The mere knowledge that May was within speaking distance troubled him in a vague fashion. And if Adam Sutherland laid eyes on him! By now the owner of the Block S must have been informed of what had befallen Mark Steele. Robin looked up from these reflections to find May at his elbow, smiling uncertainly. He rose. For the life of him he could not help a slightly apprehensive glance past her. She seemed to divine his thought. “Dad’s having a smoke back in the observation,” she said.