Chapter One

A Horse in Need

He came into the town as a solid, swiftly moving dust cloud.  The wind from behind had kept the dust moving forward at a pace just equal to the gallop of his horse.  Not until he had brought his mount to a halt in front of the hotel and swung down to the ground did either he or his horse become distinctly visible.  Then it was seen that the animal was in the last stages of exhaustion, with dull eyes and hanging head and forelegs braced widely apart, while the sweat dripped steadily from his flanks into the white dust on the street.  Plainly he had been pushed to the last limit of his strength.

The rider was almost as far spent as his mount, for he went up the steps of the hotel with his shoulders sagging with weariness, a wide-shouldered, gaunt-ribbed man.  Thick layers of dust had turned his red kerchief and his blue shirt to a common gray.  Dust, too, made a mask of his face, and through that mask the eyes peered out, surrounded by pink skin.  Even at its best the long, solemn face could never have been called handsome.  But, on this particular day, he seemed a haunted man, or one fleeing from an inescapable danger.

The two loungers at the door of the hotel instinctively stepped aside and made room for him to pass, but apparently he had no desire to enter the building.  Suddenly he became doubly imposing, as he stood on the veranda and stared up and down at the idlers.  Certainly his throat must be thick and hot with dust, but an overmastering purpose made him oblivious of thirst.

“Gents,” he said huskily, while a gust of wind fanned a cloud of dust from his clothes, “is there anybody in this town can gimme a hoss to get to Stillwater, inside three hours’ riding?”

He waited a moment, his hungry eyes traveling eagerly from face to face.  Naturally the oldest man spoke first, since this was a matter of life and death.

“Any hoss in town can get you there in that time, if you know the short way across the mountain.”

“How do you take it?  That’s the way for me.”

But the old fellow shook his head and smiled in pity.  “Not if you ain’t rode it before.  I used to go that way when I was a kid, but nowadays nobody rides that way except Doone.  That trail is as tricky as the ways of a coyote; you’d sure get lost without a guide.”

The stranger turned and followed the gesture of the speaker.  The mountain rose from the very verge of the town, a ragged mass of sand and rock, with miserable sagebrush clinging here and there, as dull and uninteresting as the dust itself.  Then he lowered the hand from beneath which he had peered and faced about with a sigh.  “I guess it ain’t much good trying that way.  But I got to get to Stillwater inside of three hours.”

“They’s one hoss in town can get you there,” said the old man.  “But you can’t get that hoss today.”