As it happened, he could not find the tobacco, and having a hazy recollection of laying it on the ground the last time he filled his pipe, he shook his aching shoulders and trudged on.  The loss of the tobacco decided him, and with a malediction on Alton he made for Horton’s.  It was also a fateful decision with far-reaching results he made just then.  Supper had long been cleared away when he entered the general room of the hotel, and then stopped a moment with his hand on the door, for the one man who sat under the big lamp was the last person he desired to meet.  He had, however, some papers spread out in front of him, and Damer decided to slip away quietly, but as he moved the blankets on his shoulders struck the door, which rattled, and the man looked up sharply.  He had a fleshy face, and black beady eyes, which he fixed on Damer, who stood still, with a little, unpleasant smile.

“Come right in!” he said.

Damer smothered an anathema as he recognized the command in the tone.  “No,” he said.  “If you don’t mind, Mr. Hallam, I’ll be getting on again.”

“Come in!” said Hallam, a trifle more sharply, but for just a moment Damer remained motionless.  A few steps would take him down the verandah stairway, and then the shadowy bush lay before him.  Had he had a horse, he would have obeyed the impulse which prompted him to avoid the encounter; but, as it happened, owing to the fact that Alton had met the rancher who would otherwise have lent him one, he had none.  So with evident unwillingness he came slowly forward, and dropping his bundles on the floor flung himself into a chair.

“Well,” he said, “I’m here.”

Hallam, who had been watching him, nodded reflectively.  “I guess you didn’t expect to find me, or you wouldn’t have come,” he said.  “Where were you going?”

“To the railroad,” said Damer.  “Out of the country!”

“Without telling me?  That was kind of foolish of you.  Still, you haven’t much sense, anyway.  You had quite a well-paid job at Somasco.”

“Well,” said Damer dryly, “I haven’t got it now.”

Hallam laughed, though the glint in his eyes did not express good will.  “You have got a temper that will be the ruin of you, and don’t know when a man’s too big for you, while, now I come to look at you, there’s a lump on your forehead that makes the thing quite plain.  You have been fooling with Alton, and he has ’most pounded the life out of you.  Still, what do you want to leave the country for, anyway?”

Damer set his lips, and drummed with his fingers on the table.  Then he made a little deprecatory gesture, and glanced at Hallam.

“You’ll hear it all by and by, but there’s one point where you’re wrong,” he said.  “Now, I’m not scared too easily, but I kind of feel it in me I’ll make nothing but trouble for myself by worrying Alton.  Still, it’s not the man himself I’m afraid of.  I’ve met tougher ones, and come out ahead of them.”