him.  He climbed over rough, broken rock, picking his way carefully, and then went down.  Here it was darker, and sheltered from the wind.  A white object guided him.  It was another dog, and this one was asleep, curled up between a saddle and a pack.  The animal awoke and thumped his tail in greeting.  Venters placed the saddle for a pillow, rolled in his blankets, with his face upward to the stars.  The white dog snuggled close to him.  The other whined and pattered a few yards to the rise of ground and there crouched on guard.  And in that wild covert Venters shut his eyes under the great white stars and intense vaulted blue, bitterly comparing their loneliness to his own, and fell asleep.

When he awoke, day had dawned and all about him was bright steel-gray.  The air had a cold tang.  Arising, he greeted the fawning dogs and stretched his cramped body, and then, gathering together bunches of dead sage sticks, he lighted a fire.  Strips of dried beef held to the blaze for a moment served him and the dogs.  He drank from a canteen.  There was nothing else in his outfit; he had grown used to a scant fire.  Then he sat over the fire, palms outspread, and waited.  Waiting had been his chief occupation for months, and he scarcely knew what he waited for unless it was the passing of the hours.  But now he sensed action in the immediate present; the day promised another meeting with Lassiter and Lane, perhaps news of the rustlers; on the morrow he meant to take the trail to Deception Pass.

And while he waited he talked to his dogs.  He called them Ring and Whitie; they were sheep-dogs, half collie, half deerhound, superb in build, perfectly trained.  It seemed that in his fallen fortunes these dogs understood the nature of their value to him, and governed their affection and faithfulness accordingly.  Whitie watched him with somber eyes of love, and Ring, crouched on the little rise of ground above, kept tireless guard.  When the sun rose, the white dog took the place of the other, and Ring went to sleep at his master’s feet.

By and by Venters rolled up his blankets and tied them and his meager pack together, then climbed out to look for his horse.  He saw him, presently, a little way off in the sage, and went to fetch him.  In that country, where every rider boasted of a fine mount and was eager for a race, where thoroughbreds dotted the wonderful grazing ranges, Venters rode a horse that was sad proof of his misfortunes.

Then, with his back against a stone, Venters faced the east, and, stick in hand and idle blade, he waited.  The glorious sunlight filled the valley with purple fire.  Before him, to left, to right, waving, rolling, sinking, rising, like low swells of a purple sea, stretched the sage.  Out of the grove of cottonwoods, a green patch on the purple, gleamed the dull red of Jane Withersteen’s old stone house.  And from there extended the wide green of the village gardens and orchards marked by the graceful poplars; and farther down shone the deep, dark richness of the alfalfa fields.  Numberless red and black and white dots speckled the sage, and these were cattle and horses.