So Pete Johnson’s thoughts were of millions; not without a queer feeling that he wouldn’t have the least idea what to do with them, and that he was parting with something in his past, priceless, vaguely indefinable:  a sharing and acceptance of the common lot, a brotherhood with the not fortunate.

Riding to the northwest, Pete’s broad gray sombrero was tilted aside to shelter from the noonday sun a russet face, crinkled rather than wrinkled, and dusty.  His hair, thinning at the temples, vigorous at the ears, was crisply white.  A short and lately trimmed mustache held a smile in ambush; above it towered such a nose as Wellington loved.

It was broad at the base; deep creases ran from the corners of it, flanking the white mustache, to a mouth strong, full-lipped and undeniably large, ready alike for laughter or for sternness.

The nose—­to follow the creases back again—­was fleshy and beaked at the tip; it narrowed at the level bridge and broadened again where it joined the forehead, setting the eyes well apart.  The eyes themselves were blue, just a little faded—­for the man was sixty-two—­and there were wind-puckers at the corners of them.  But they were keen eyes, steady, sparkling and merry eyes, for all that; they were deep-set and long, and they sloped a trifle, high on the inside corners; pent in by pepper-and-salt brows, bushy, tufted and thick, roguishly aslant from the outer corners up to where they all but met above the Wellingtonian nose.  A merry face, a forceful face:  Pete was a little man, five feet seven, and rather slender than otherwise; but no one, in view of that face, ever thought of him as a small man or an old one.

The faint path merged with another and another, the angles of convergence giving the direction of the unknown water hole; they came at last to the main trail, a trunk line swollen by feeders from every ridge and arroyo.  It bore away to the northeast, swerving, curving to pitch and climb in faultless following of the rule of roads—­the greatest progress with the least exertion.  Your cow is your best surveyor.

They came on the ranch suddenly, rounding a point into a small natural amphitheater.  A flat-roofed dugout, fronted with stone, was built into the base of a boulder-piled hill; the door was open.  Midnight perked his black head jauntily and slanted an ear.

High overhead, a thicket of hackberry and arrow-weed overhung the little valley.  From this green tangle a pipe line on stilts broke away and straddled down a headlong hill.  Frost was unknown; the pipe was supported by forked posts of height assorted to need, an expedient easier than ditching that iron hillside.  The water discharged into a fenced and foursquare earthen reservoir; below it was a small corral of cedar stakes; through the open gate, as he rode by, Pete saw a long watering-trough with a float valve.  Before the dugout stood a patriarchal juniper, in the shade of which two saddled horses stood droop-hipped, comfortably asleep.  Waking, as Pete drew near, they adjusted their disarray in some confusion and eyed the newcomers with bright-eyed inquiry.  Midnight, tripping by, hailed them with a civil little whinny.