“Find it there,” he indicated, “drop a nickel—­then, ring!”

“Did you see that look?” gritted the old Britisher between his teeth, as the fellow sauntered away with elaborate indifference.

“Yes, but looks don’t go with a jury.”

“Neck-tie was effective with the likes of him in my day!”

For the third time, Wayland uttered the same sardonic laugh.  What was happening to the old Britisher to change his point of view?

“I’ll go on down to the River and prepare grub.”

What Wayland was thinking, he did not say; but what was passing in the brain of the law-loving old Britisher that the rakish tilt of the hat, the insolent angle of the tooth-pick, the spread of a man’s thumbs and feet—­could break through hide-bound respect for law and elicit reference to the court of the old-time neck-tie?

At the River, the Ranger loosened the saddle girths and put a small kettle to boil above a fire of cottonwood chips and grass.  Then he took out his note book and wrote the note to Eleanor which he gave to one of the road gang for Calamity.  The note said:  “We are setting out on the Long Trail . . . the Long Trail this Nation will have to travel before Democracy arrives . . . the trail of the Man behind the Thing . . . the Man Higher Up.”  How did the Ranger know what was going on up at the telephone in the pergola, where British respect for law was at one end of the wire and the handy man of the Valley at the other?

There was no bitterness in the quizzical smile with which he awaited the old man’s return; for as he lay back on the ground watching the fire burn up, the letter brought again, not memory, but consciousness of that seal to service, he wondered half vaguely could she know, could she realize, did a woman ever realize what her love meant to a man.  She could surely never have given such full draughts of life, of wondrous new revealing consciousness, unless they were drinking together from the same perennial, ever-new, ever-surprising spring! . . .  He did not hear the footsteps till the old man spoke—­

“A somehow—­didna’ seem—­to get—­them clear!  They answered; then—­they didna’ answer! Smelter City Herald—­ye said?  ’Twas strange—­’twas vera strange—­A got an answer plain asking my name—­then central said ’ring off! ring off! can’t get them, wire out of order’!”

This time, Wayland did not laugh.  Had not the wires been out of order since first he began to ring the bells of his little insignificant place to a Nation’s alarm?

They ate their bannocks—­’Rocky Mountain dead shot’ Westerners call the slap-jacks—­in silence.  While the old man still pondered mazed and dumb, the Ranger dabbled the cups and plates in the River and recinched the pack saddle, the little mule blowing out his sides and groaning to ease the girth, the bronchos wisely eating to the process of reharnessing.  The Britisher’s reverence for law dies hard.  Wayland saw the wrestle and kept silent.  A deep low boom rolled dully through the earth in smothered rumblings and tremblings like distant thunder.