The pack-horses paced down the trail, far ahead, with snatched nibblings at convenient wayside tufts of grass.

Jackson Carr, freighter, was still camped at Hospital Springs.  He lifted up his eyes as this careless procession sauntered down the hills; and, rising, intercepted its coming at the forks of the trail, heading the pack-horses in toward his camp.  He walked with a twisting limp, his blue eyes were faded and pale, his bearded face was melancholy and sad; but as he seated himself on a stone and waited for Johnson’s coming, some of the sadness passed and his somber face lit up with unwonted animation.

“Howdy, Pete!  I heard yuh was coming.  I waited for yuh.”

Pete leaped from his horse and gripped the freighter’s hand.

“Jackson Carr, by all that’s wonderful!  Jack, old man!  How is it with you?”

Jackson Carr hesitated, speaking slowly: 

“Sally’s gone, Pete.  She died eight years ago.  She had a hard life of it, Pete.  Gay and cheerful to the last, though.  Always such a brave little trick...”

His voice trailed off to silence.  It was long before Pete Johnson broke upon that silence.

“We’ll soon be by with it, Jack.  Day before yesterday we was boys together in Uvalde an’ Miss Sally a tomboy with us.  To-morrow will be no worse, as I figure it.”  He looked hard at the hills.  “It can’t be all a silly joke.  That would be too stupid!  No jolthead made these hills.  It’s all right, I reckon....  And the little shaver?  He was only a yearlin’ when I saw him last.  And I haven’t heard a word about you since.”

“Right as rain, Bobby is.  Goin’ on ten now.  Of course ’tain’t as if he had his mother to look after him; but I do the best I can by him.  Wish he had a better show for schoolin’, though.  I haven’t been prosperin’ much—­since Sally died.  Seems like I sorter lost my grip.  But I aim to put Bobby in school here when it starts up, next fall.  I am asking you no questions about yourself, Pete, because I have done little but ask questions about you since I first heard you were here, four or five days ago.”

“By hooky, Jack, I never expected to see you again.  Where you been all these years?  And how’d you happen to turn up here?”

“Never mind me, Pete.  Here is too much talk of my affairs and none of yours.  Man, I have news for your ear!  Your pardner’s in jail.”

“Ya-as?  What’s he been doin’ now?”

“Highway robbery.  He got caught with the goods on.  Eight or nine hundred.”

“The little old skeesicks!  Who’d have thought it of him?” said Pete tolerantly.  Then his face clouded over.  “He might have let me in on it!” he complained.  “Jack, you lead me to your grub pile and tell me all about it.  Sounds real interestin’.  Where’s Bob?  He asleep yet?”

“Huh!  Asleep?” said Carr with a sniff that expressed fatherly pride in no small degree.

“Not him!  Lit out o’ here at break o’ day—­him and that devil horse of his, wrangling the work stock.  He’s a mighty help to me.  I ain’t very spry on my pins since—­you know.”