When Howard dismounted at the home corrals and began unsaddling, Carr rode on to the house.

‘You’re going to stay all night, John,’ Howard called after him.  ’Put your horse in the barn.’

But Carr swung down at the yard gate and tied his horse there.

‘Can’t this time,’ he said.  ‘I’ll have to ride on, Al.’

Thus each made his pretence, less to his friend than to himself, that everything was all right.  They sought to be natural and failed, and knew that they had failed.  Carr waited for Howard, smoking at the gate; Howard hastened up to the house and went in.  He struck a match, lighted the table lamp and filled the pipe lying beside it.  Carr tossed his hat to the table and sat down.  Their eyes roved about the familiar room.  Here were countless traces of both men; Carr had lived here, Howard lived here now.  Helen had been here, and she too had left something to mark her passing.  They both saw it.  It was only a bluebird’s feather, but Alan had set it in a place of conspicuousness just above the fireplace.  Even into a room which had been home to each, which they had held must always be home to both, something of Helen came like a little ghost.

‘You’ll have use for some money about now,’ said Howard abruptly.  He drew out the table drawer; inside were scraps of paper, a fountain-pen, a cheque-book and some old stubs.  ’Time’s up for a payment, too.  I sold a pretty fair string the other day.’

‘I could use a little cash,’ Carr admitted carelessly.  ’I’ve got in pretty deep with the Quigley mining outfit.  I made Longstreet a proposition—­I am a trifle short, I guess,’ he concluded lamely.

‘I see,’ responded Howard, whereas he saw nothing at all very clearly.  He busied himself with his pen, shook it savagely, opened his cheque-book.  ‘Ten thousand this trip, wasn’t it?’

Carr hesitated.

‘I had figured on twelve five,’ he said.  ’Wasn’t that the amount due now?’

Howard hunted through the back of the drawer and finally found a little memorandum book.  He turned through the pages upon which he had scribbled notes of purchases of cattle and horses and of ranch equipment, passed on to a tabulation of his men’s wages, and finally stopped at a page devoted to his agreement with his friend.

‘Here you are,’ he said when he had found it.  ’Ten thousand, due on the eleventh of the month.  I’m pretty near a week late on it, John,’ he smiled.

Carr however had his own note-book with him; readily he found his own entry.

‘I’ve set it down here as twelve thousand five hundred,’ he said quietly.  ’You remember we talked over a couple of methods of payment, Al.  But,’ and he snapped the rubber band about his book and dropped it into his pocket, ‘what’s the odds?  Let it go at ten.’

‘No,’ said Howard.  ‘Not if you’ve counted on more.’  A flush ran up into his face and his eyes were inscrutable.  He was conscious of being in the absurd mood to note trifles; John had come with his memoranda, John had meant to ask him for the money.  ’I’d just as lief pay twenty-five hundred extra now as at any time.’  And with lowered head and sputtering pen he wrote the cheque.