“Of course you know about the new addition to our citizenship, John Prather, that double of yours that you didn’t happen to meet.  And I might mention that by this time, after we’ve seen so much of him, we agree with the Doge that he doesn’t look a bit like you.  Well, he’s making a fine ranch across the road from you, but hiring all his work done, which ain’t exactly according to Little Rivers custom, as you will remember.  The Doge sets a lot by him, though I can’t see how there’s much in common between them.  This fellow’s not full of all that kind of scholastic persiflage that you are, Jack.  He’s so all-fired practical his joints would crack if he wasn’t so oily; and he’s up to old man Lefferts’ pretty often.

“He goes to Phoenix a good deal.  When I was there the other day I heard he was circulating around among the politicians in his quiet way, and I saw him and Pete Leddy hobnobbing together.  I didn’t like that.  But when I told the Doge of it he said he guessed there wasn’t much real hobnobbing.  The Doge is certainly strong for Prather.  Another thing I heard was that, after all, old man Lefferts’ two partners aren’t dead, and Prather’s been hunting them up.

“Come to think of it, I didn’t tell you that Pete Leddy and some of the gang have been back in town.  Of course we have every confidence in the Doge, he’s been so fair to this community.  Still, some of us can’t help having our private suspicions, considering what a lot we have at stake.  And four or five of us was talking the other night, when suddenly we all agreed how you’d shine in any trouble, and if there was going to be any—­not that there is—­we wished you were here.

“Well, Jack, the pass hasn’t changed and the sunsets are just as grand as ever and the air just as free.  The pass won’t have changed and the sunsets will be doing business at the old stand when the antiquaries are digging up the remote civilization of Little Rivers and putting it in a high scale because they ran across a pot of Mrs. Galway’s jam in the ruins—­the same hifalutin compliment being your own when you were nursing your wound, as you will remember.

“Here’s wishing you luck from the whole town, way out here in nowhere.

“As ever yours,

“James R. Galway.

“P.S.  Belvy Smith wants to know if you won’t write just one story.  I told her you were too busy for such nonsense now.  But she refuses to believe it.  She says being busy doesn’t matter to you.  She says the stories just pop out.  So I transmit her request.  J.R.G.”

“P.D. waiting!” breathed Jack.  “No changing Firio!  He is like the pass.  I wonder how Wrath of God and Jag Ear are!”

He wrote a story for Belvy.  He wrote to Firio in resolute assertion that he would never require the services of P.D. again, when he knew that Firio, despite the protests, would still keep P.D. fit for the trail.  He wrote to Jim Galway how immersed he was in his new career, but that he might come for a while—­for a little while, with emphasis—­if ever Jim wired that he was needed.