wait until the moon comes up. But I never walk home when I'm kept late.
The division superintendent lends me the track-walker's velocipede and
I whiz home like the limited. There isn't any danger, and if there was
I could outrun it. Do you wish to register before I go, Mr. Hennage? I
suppose you'll want your old room?"

The gambler nodded and Donna returned to the cashier's counter. After
assigning Mr. Hennage to his quarters she telephoned to the baggage
room next door where the track-walker for that division stored his
velocipede, and asked to have the machine brought out and placed on
the tracks.

For perhaps half an hour she conversed with Harley P., much to that
careless soul's discomfort, for he was terribly afraid of affording the
San Pasqualians grounds for "talk." And as she waited the moon arose,
lighting up the half mile of track that led past the Hat Ranch; and
Fate, under whose direction all the dramas of life are staged, gave the
cue to the Leading Man.

He entered San Pasqual, riding down through the desert from Owens river
valley. But he was not in the least such a Leading Man as Donna had
pictured in her dreams. He was tall enough but his hair was not crisp
and curly and golden. Most people would have called it red. Not, praise
be, a carroty red, a dull negative, scrubby red, but a nicer red than
that--dark auburn, in fact. And he had an Irish nose and an Irish jaw
and Irish eyes of bonny brown. In but one particular did he resemble
the dream man. He did have a cleft in his chin. But even that was none
of nature's doing. A Mexican with a knife was solely responsible. Yet,
worse than all of these disappointments is the fact that his name was
_not_ Gerald Van Alstyne. No, indeed. The Leading Man owned to the