“Yep.  But I changed my mind.”

“What made you change your mind?”

“I dunno.”

“Well, I reckon I do.  Now, see here, Pete.  You been up against it ’most all your life.  You ain’t so bad off with old Montoya, but I sabe how you feel about herding sheep.  You want to get to riding.  But first you want to get a job.  Now you go over to the Concho and tell Bailey—­’he’s the foreman—­that I sent you, and that if he’ll give you a job, I’ll outfit you.  You can take your time paying for it.”

Pete blinked and choked a little.  “I ain’t askin’ nobody to give me nothin’,” he said brusquely.

“Yes, you be.  You’re asking Bailey for a job.  It’s all right to ask for something you mean to pay for, and you’ll pay for your job by workin’.  That there rig you can pay for out of your wages.  I was always intending to do something for you—­only you didn’t stay.  I reckon I’m kind o’ slow.  ’Most everybody is in Concho.  And seeing as you come back and paid up like a man—­I’m going to charge that gun up against wages you earned when you was working for me, and credit you with the eighteen-fifty on the new rig.  Now you fan it back to Montoya and tell him what you aim to do and then if you got time, come over to-morrow and pick out your rig.  You don’t have to take it till you get your job.”

Pete twisted his hat in his hands.  He did not know what to say.  Slowly he backed from the room, turned, and strode out to Andy White.  Andy wondered what Pete had been up to, but waited for him to speak.

Presently Pete cleared his throat.  “I’m coming over to your wickiup to-morrow and strike for a job.  I got the promise of a rig, all right.  Don’t want no second-hand rig, anyhow!  I’m the Ridin’ Kid from Powder River and I’m comin’ with head up and tail a-rollin’.”

“Whoopee!” sang Andy, and swung to his pony.

“I’m a-comin’!” called Pete as Andy clattered away into the night.

Pete felt happy and yet strangely subdued.  The dim road flickered before him as he trudged back to the sheep-camp.  “Pop would ‘a’ done it that way,” he said aloud.  And for a space, down the darkening road he walked in that realm where the invisible walk, and beside him trudged the great, rugged shape of Annersley, the spirit of the old man who always “played square,” feared no man, and fulfilled a purpose in the immeasurable scheme of things.  Pete knew that Annersley would have been pleased.  So it was that Young Pete paid the most honorable debt of all, the debt to memory that the debtor’s own free hand may pay or not—­and none be the wiser, save the debtor.  Pete had “played square.”  It was all the more to his credit that he hated like the dickens to give up his eighteen dollars and a half, and yet had done so.

CHAPTER VIII

SOME BOOKKEEPING