Then he touched the horse with his heel, and Damer's gaze grew venomous
as he watched him ride away down the shadowy trail. The rancher
evidently noticed it.

"Now I begin to understand how you got your jacket tore up and that
lump on your forehead," he said. "I wasn't quite sure about your tale,
anyway, and if Harry fired you it was for something mean. You'll get
no horse from me."

The other man said nothing as he turned away, but his face was not
pleasant as he plodded down the trail, and those words of Alton's were
to cost him dear, for if Damer had obtained the horse he wanted to
carry him to the railroad he would in all probability have left the
country, which would have prevented a good deal of trouble. As it was,
however, he restrapped the roll of blankets on his back, and trudged on
with bitterness in his heart under the heat of the afternoon. He had
when he left the Somasco mill headed in the direction of the Tyee mine,
and passed the night in the woods; but with the morning reflection
came, and he had doubled on his trail and was then making for the
railroad, stiff with fatigue. Each time he stumbled into a rut and the
jolt shook him he remembered his last grievance against Alton, who had
sent him on foot, and his frame of mind was not an enviable one when he
limped into sight of the settlement as dusk was closing down.

He had made a long journey that day, and a good deal depended on the
fact that he was weary and his boots galled him, because it had been
his intention to push on to a ranch beyond the settlement before he
slept, and hire a horse there. Damer was not especially sensitive, but
he felt no great desire to encounter the badinage of the men generally