The stranger sprang up in quick interest.  “You can?  The Cross-Triangle Ranch?”

“Sure,” the cowboy smiled and pointed into the distance.  “Those red spots over there are the roofs.  Jim Reid’s place—­the Pot-Hook-S—­is just this side of the meadows, and a little to the south.  The old Acton homestead—­where I was born—­is in that bunch of cottonwoods, across the wash from the Cross-Triangle.”

But strive as he might the stranger’s eyes could discern no sign of human habitation in those vast reaches that lay before him.

“If you are ever over that way, drop in,” said Phil cordially.  “Mr. Baldwin will be glad to meet you.”

“Do you really mean that?” questioned the other doubtfully.

“We don’t say such things in this country if we don’t mean them, Stranger,” was the cool retort.

“Of course, I beg your pardon, Mr. Acton,” came the confused reply.  “I should like to see the ranch.  I may—­I will—­That is, if I—­” He stopped as if not knowing how to finish, and with a gesture of hopelessness turned away to stand silently looking back toward the town, while his face was dark with painful memories, and his lips curved in that mirthless, self-mocking smile.

And Philip Acton, seeing, felt suddenly that he had rudely intruded upon the privacy of one who had sought the solitude of that lonely place to hide the hurt of some bitter experience.  A certain native gentleness made the man of the ranges understand that this stranger was face to face with some crisis in his life—­that he was passing through one of those trials through which a man must pass alone.  Had it been possible the cowboy would have apologized.  But that would have been an added unkindness.  Lifting the reins and sitting erect in the saddle, he said indifferently, “Well, I must be moving.  I take a short cut here.  So long!  Better make it on down to the goat ranch—­it’s not far.”

He touched his horse with the spur and the animal sprang away.

“Good-bye!” called the stranger, and that wistful look was in his eyes as the rider swung his horse aside from the road, plunged down the mountain side, and dashed away through the brush and over the rocks with reckless speed.  With a low exclamation of wondering admiration, the man climbed hastily to a higher point, and from there watched until horse and rider, taking a steeper declivity without checking their breakneck course, dropped from sight in a cloud of dust.  The faint sound of the sliding rocks and gravel dislodged by the flying feet died away; the cloud of dust dissolved in the thin air.  The stranger looked away into the blue distance in another vain attempt to see the red spots that marked the Cross-Triangle Ranch.

Slowly the man returned to his seat on the rock.  The long shadows of Granite Mountain crept out from the base of the cliffs farther and farther over the country below.  The blue of the distant hills changed to mauve with deeper masses of purple in the shadows where the canyons are.  The lonely figure on the summit of the Divide did not move.