The dog sat in the doorway of the office, oblivious to the clerk’s friendly assurances that his master would return poco tiempo.  Bondsman was not deceived by this kindly attempt to soothe his loneliness.

Toward evening the up-stage buzzed into town.  Bondsman trotted over to it, watched a rancher and his wife alight, sniffed at them incuriously, and trotted back to the office.  That settled it.  His master would be away indefinitely.

When the clerk locked up that evening, Bondsman had disappeared.

As Bronson stepped from his cabin the following morning he was startled to see the big Airedale leap from the veranda of Shoop’s cabin and bound toward him.  Then he understood.  The camp had been Bondsman’s home.  The supervisor had gone to Criswell.  Evidently the dog preferred the lonely freedom of the Blue Mesa to the monotonous confines of town.

Bronson called to his daughter.  “We have a visitor this morning, Dorothy.”

“Why, it’s Bondsman!  Where is Mr. Shoop?”

“Most natural question.  Mr. Shoop had to leave Jason on business.  Bondsman couldn’t go, so he trotted up here to pay us a visit.”

“He’s hungry.  I know it.  Come, Bondsman.”

From that moment he attached himself to Dorothy, following her about that day and the next and the next.  But when night came he invariably trotted over to Shoop’s cabin and slept on the veranda.  Dorothy wondered why he would not sleep at their camp.

“He’s very friendly,” she told her father.  “He will play and chase sticks and growl, and pretend to bite when I tickle him, but he does it all with a kind of mental reservation.  Yesterday, when we were having our regular frolic after breakfast, he stopped suddenly and stood looking out across the mesa, and it was only my pony, just coming from the edge of the woods.  Bondsman tries to be polite, but he is really just passing the time while he is waiting for Mr. Shoop.”

“You don’t feel flattered, perhaps.  But don’t you admire him all the more for it?”

“I believe I do.  Poor Bondsman!  It’s just like being a social pet, isn’t it?  Have to appear happy whether you are or not.”

Bondsman knew that she proffered sympathy, and he licked her hand lazily, gazing up at her with bright, unreadable eyes.

* * * * *

Bud Shoop wasted no time in Stacey.  He puffed into the hotel, indecision behind him and a definite object in view.

“No use talkin’,” he said to Mrs. Adams.  “We got to go and take care of Jim.  I couldn’t get word to Lorry.  No tellin’ where to locate him just now.  Mebby it’s just as well.  They’s a train west along about midnight.  Now, you get somebody to stay here till we get back—­”

“But, Mr. Shoop!  I can’t leave like this.  I haven’t a thing ready.  Anita can’t manage alone.”