The unspoken wish was granted.  When he entered the smoking-room he found it empty; and, filling his cutty pipe, he drew the cushioned wicker chair out to face the open window.  Fresh glimpses of the northward landscape shortly brought a renewal of the heart-stirrings; and when he finally had the longed-for sight of a bunch of grazing cattle, with the solitary night-herd hanging by one leg in the saddle to watch the passing of the train, the call of the homeland was trumpeting in his ears, and he would have given anything in reason to be able to changes places, temporarily at least, with the care-free horseman whose wiry, muscular figure was struck out so artistically against the dun-colored hillside.

“Would I really do such a thing as that?” he asked himself half incredulously, when the night-herd and his grazing drove had become only a picturesque memory; and out of the heart-stirrings and pulse-quickenings came the answer:  “I more than half believe that I would—­that I’d jump at the chance.”  Then he added regretfully:  “But there isn’t going to be any chance.”

“Any chance to do what?” rumbled a mellow voice at his elbow, and Blount turned quickly to find that a big, bearded man, smoking an abnormally corpulent cigar, had come in to take his seat on the divan.

At another time Blount, the conventional Blount, would have been self-conscious and embarrassed, as any human being is when he is caught talking to himself.  But with the transformation had come a battering down of doors in the house of the broader fellowship, and he laughed good-naturedly.

“You caught me fairly,” he acknowledged.  “I thought I still had the place to myself.”

“But the chance?” persisted the big man, looking him over appraisively.  “You don’t look like a man who has had to hang round on the aidges hankerin’ after things he couldn’t get.”

“I guess I haven’t had to do that very often,” was the reflective rejoinder.  “But a mile or so back we passed a bunch of cattle, with the night man riding watch; I was just saying to myself that I’d like to change places with that night-herd—­only there wasn’t going to be any chance.”

The bearded man’s laugh was a deep-chested rumbling suggestive of rocks rolling down a declivity.

“Lordy gracious!” he chuckled.  “If you was to get a leg over a bronc’, and the bronc’ should find it out—­Say, I’ve got a li’l’ blue horse out on my place in the Antelopes that’d plumb give his ears to have you try it; he shore would.  You take my advice, and don’t you go huntin’ a job night-ridin’ in the greasewood hills.  Don’t you do it!”

“I assure you I hadn’t thought of doing it for a permanency.  But just for a bit of adventure, if the chance should offer while I’m in the notion.  I believe I’d take it.  I haven’t ridden a cow-pony for fourteen years, but I don’t believe I’ve lost the knack of it.”

“Ho!” said the big man.  “Then you ain’t as much of a tenderfoot as you look to be.  Shake!” and he held out a hand as huge as a bear’s paw.  Following the hand-grip he grew confidential. “’Long in the afternoon I stuck my head in at the door and saw you chewin’ the rag with a thin-faced old nester that couldn’t set still in his chair while he talked.  Know him?”