The doctor rode away toward the west, bowing his head before the strong wind that he knew too well to fear, yet wondering as he rode if he had done wisely to dare the deepening snow of the buried trail. "I might have waited a day, anyhow," he thought. "It's a devil of a ride over to Jim Shirley's, and we got only the tag ends of that storm down at the Crossing from the looks of this. However, I may as well keep at it now." He surged on for a few miles without any signs of an open trail appearing. Then he dropped to a slow canter. "I'd better get this worry straightened and my mind untangled if I am to have any comfort on this ride," he said aloud, as was his wont to do when out in the open alone. "Everything happens to a man who gives too much leeway to that indefinite inside guide saying, 'Do this! Let that alone!' And yet that guide hasn't failed me when I've listened to it." He let the pony have the rein as he looked ahead with unseeing eyes. "What made me take this day? First, everybody is well enough to be left for two or three days, good time for a vacation, and Stewart can take care of emergencies always. Second, I promised Jim I'd see that his letters got to him straightway. Third, yes, third, something said, 'Go now!' But here's the other side. Why go on the heels of a snowstorm? Why not keep Jim's letter a day or two? It's in my hands. And why mistrust a man who calls himself innocent 'Thomas Smith?' That's it. He's too innocent. There's no place on these wide Kansas prairies for that man Thomas Smith. He'd better get back to his home and his real name at once." The doctor smiled at the thought, then he frowned at the cold wind and the shifting snows above the trail. "You are a fool--a stack of fools, Dr. Horace Carey, to beat out of town miles on miles on a fool's errand over a lost trail, trusting your instinct that never lost you a direction yet, and all because of an inward call to an unrevealed duty. Some other day will do as well. And here's where I may as well cut off these notions of being led by inside signals. What should make me sight danger in a man I never saw before, and who will probably go out on the stage tomorrow morning? Oh, well, the Lord made us as we are. He knows why." He wheeled the pony about and began to trot toward Carey's Crossing. Suddenly he halted. "Let me see. I'm not twenty miles along, though I've come at a good rate. I believe I'll cut across northwest and hit some of the settlers up on Big Wolf Creek for the night. Lucky I've no wife to worry about me." A wave of sadness swept over the man's face--just a sweep of sorrow that left no mark. He turned abruptly from the trail and struck in a definite direction across the snow-covered prairie. Presently his path veered to the north, then to northwest.