“I reckon you’re right,” said Stacy briefly, extending his hand.  “Shake on that!”

The two men grasped each other’s hands.

“And he’s no fool, either,” continued Demorest.  “When we met Steptoe on the road, without a word from me, he closed up alongside, with his hand on the lock of his rifle.  And I hadn’t the heart to praise him or laugh it off.”

Nevertheless they were both silent as the object of their criticism bounded down the trail towards them.  He had seen the funeral pyre.  It was awfully sad, it was awfully lovely, but there was something grand in it!  Who could have thought Stacy could be so poetic?  But he wanted to tell them something else that was mighty pretty.

“What was it?” said Demorest.

“Well,” said Barker, “don’t laugh!  But you know that Jack Hamlin?  Well, boys, he’s been hovering around us on his mustang, keeping us and that pack-mule in sight ever since we left.  Sometimes he’s on a side trail off to the right, sometimes off to the left, but always at the same distance.  I didn’t like to tell you, boys, for I thought you’d laugh at me; but I think, you know, he’s taken a sort of shine to us since he dropped in last night.  And I fancy, you see, he’s sort of hanging round to see that we get along all right.  I’d have pointed him out before only I reckoned you and Stacy would say he was making up to us for our money.”

“And we’d have been wrong, Barker boy,” said Stacy, with a heartiness that surprised Demorest, “for I reckon your instinct’s the right one.”

“There he is now,” said the gratified Barker, “just abreast of us on the cut-off.  He started just after we did, and he’s got a horse that could have brought him into Boomville hours ago.  It’s just his kindness.”

He pointed to a distant fringe of buckeye from which Jack Hamlin had just emerged.  Although evidently holding in a powerful mustang, nothing could be more unconscious and utterly indifferent than his attitude.  He did not seem to know of the proximity of any other traveler, and to care less.  His handsome head was slightly thrown back, as if he was caroling after his usual fashion, but the distance was too great to make his melody audible to them, or to allow Barker’s shout of invitation to reach him.  Suddenly he lowered his tightened rein, the mustang sprang forward, and with a flash of silver spurs and bridle fripperies he had disappeared.  But as the trail he was pursuing crossed theirs a mile beyond, it seemed quite possible that they should again meet him.

They were now fairly into the Boomville valley, and were entering a narrow arroyo bordered with dusky willows which effectually excluded the view on either side.  It was the bed of a mountain torrent that in winter descended the hillside over the trail by which they had just come, but was now sunk into the thirsty plain between banks that varied from two to five feet in height.  The muleteer had advanced