To say that Young Pete had any definite plan when he left Concho and
took up with an old Mexican sheep-herder would be stretching the
possibilities. And Pete Annersley's history will have to speak for
itself as illustrative of a plan from which he could not have departed
any more than he could have originated and followed to its final
ultimatum.

Life with the storekeeper had been tame. Pete had no horse; and the
sheriff, taking him at his word, had refused to give up either one of
the rifles unless Pete would declare which one he had used that fateful
night of the raid. And Pete would not do that. He felt that somehow
he had been cheated. Even the storekeeper Roth discouraged him from
using fire-arms, fearing that the boy might some day "cut loose" at
somebody without word or warning. Pete was well fed and did not have
to work hard, yet his ideas of what constituted a living were far
removed from the conventions of Concho. He wanted to ride, to hunt, to
drive team, to work in the open with lots of elbow-room and under a
wide sky. His one solace while in the store was the array of rifles
and six-guns which he almost reverenced for their suggestive potency.
They represented power, and the only law that he believed in.

Some time after Pete had disappeared, the store-keeper, going over his
stock, missed a heavy-caliber six-shooter. He wondered if the boy had
taken it. Both did not care so much for the loss of the gun as for the
fact that Pete might have stolen it. Later Roth discovered a crudely
printed slip of paper among the trinkets in the showcase. "I took a
gun and cartriges for my wagges. You never giv me Wages." Which was
true enough, the storekeeper figuring that Pete's board and lodging
were just about offset by his services. In paying Pete a dollar a