ranching there, and for the next three years I saw him constantly. He
had a place ten miles down the river from me. He was about four years
older than I was--a tall, slim, sandy-haired, freckled fellow,
preternaturally quiet; a trusty, if there ever was one. Unlike most
preternaturally quiet people, however, it wasn't dulness that made him
that way; he wasn't dull a bit. Stir him up on anything and you found
that he had thought about it a lot. But he never told me anything about
himself until I had known him almost two years, and then it came out
quite accidentally one night--we were on a spring round-up--when the two
of us were sitting up by the fire, smoking and staring at the desert
stars. All the rest were asleep." Burnaby paused. "Is this boring you?"
he asked.

"Oh, no!" said Mrs. Ennis; she was watching intently Pollen's
half-averted face.

Burnaby threw away his cigarette. "At first," he said, "it seemed to me
like the most ordinary of stories--the usual fixed idea that the
rejected lover carries around with him for a year or so until he forgets
it; the idea that the girl will regret her choice and one day kick over
the traces and hunt him up.

"But it wasn't the ordinary story--not by a long shot. You'll see. It
seems he had fallen in love with a girl--had been in love with her for
years--before he had left the East; a very young girl, nineteen, and of
an aspiring family. The family, naturally, didn't look upon him with any
favor whatsoever; he was poor and he didn't show the slightest
inclination to engage in any of the pursuits they considered proper to
the ambitions of a worthy young man. Rather a dreamer, I imagine, until
he had found the thing he wanted to do. Not a very impressive figure in