“The kid’s asleep?” asked the stranger, casting a careless glance at the slim form of Jig.

“I reckon so.”

“He done it almighty sudden.  Thought I seen him up and walking around when I come over the hill.”

“You got good eyes,” said Sinclair, but he was instantly put on the defensive.  He was heartily tired of Cold Feet Gaspar, his peculiarities, his whims, his weaknesses.  But Cold Feet was his riding companion, and this was a stranger.  He was thrown suddenly in the position of a defender of the helpless.  “That’s the way with these kids,” he confided carelessly to the stranger.  “They get out and ride fast for a couple of hours.  Full of ambition, they are.  But just when a growed man gets warmed up to his work; they’re through.  The kid’s tired out.”

“Come far?” asked the stranger.

“Tolerable long ways.”

Sinclair disliked questions, and for each interrogation his opinion of the newcomer descended lower and lower.  His own father had raised him on a stern pattern.  “What you mean by questions, Riley?  What you can’t figure out with your own eyes and ears and good common hoss sense, most likely the other gent don’t want you to know.”  Thereafter he had schooled himself in this particular point.  He could suppress all curiosity and go six months without knowing more than the nickname of a boon companion.

“You come from Sour Creek, maybe?” went on the other.

“Sort of,” replied Sinclair dryly.

His companion proceeded to dispense information on his own part so as to break the ice.

“I’m Jude Cartwright.”

He paused significantly, but Sinclair’s face was a blank.

“Glad to know you, Mr. Cartwright.  Mostly they call me Long Riley.”

“How are you, Riley?”

They shook hands heartily.  Cartwright took a place on the ground, cross-legged and not far from Sinclair.

“I guess you don’t know me?” he asked pointedly.

“I guess not.”

“I’m of the Jesse Cartwright family.”

Sinclair smiled blankly.

“Lucky Cartwright was my dad’s name.”

“That so?”

“I guess you ain’t ever been up Montana way,” said the stranger in disgust which he hardly veiled.

“Not much,” said Sinclair blandly.

“I wished that I was back up there.  This is a hole of a country down here.”

“Hossflesh and time will take you back, I reckon.”

“I reckon they will, when my job’s done.”

He turned a disparaging eye upon Sour Creek and its vicinity.

“Now, who would want to live in a town like that, can you tell me?”

It occurred very strongly to Riley Sinclair that Cartwright had not yet fully ascertained whether or not his companion came from that very town.  And, although the day before, he had decided that Sour Creek was most undesirable and all that pertained to it, this unasked confirmation of his own opinion grated on his nerves.