And this was not the carefully groomed and immaculately attired gentleman who, in troubled spirit, had walked alone over that long, unfenced way a year before.  This was not the timid, hesitating, shamefaced man at whom Phil Acton had laughed on the summit of the Divide.  This was a man among men—­a cowboy of the cowboys—­bronzed, and lean, and rugged; vitally alive in every inch of his long body; with self-reliant courage and daring hardihood written all over him, expressed in every tone of his voice, and ringing in every note of his laughter.

The Dean and Mrs. Baldwin and Little Billy drove in the buckboard, but the distinguished guest of the Cross-Triangle went with the Reid family in the automobile.  The professor was not at all interested in the celebration, but he could not well remain at the ranch alone, and, it may be supposed, the invitation from Kitty helped to make the occasion endurable.

The celebration this year—­the posters and circulars declared—­was to be the biggest and best that Prescott had ever offered.  In proof of the bold assertion, the program promised, in addition to the usual events, an automobile race.  Shades of all those mighty heroes of the saddle, whose names may not be erased from the history of the great West, think of it!  An automobile race offered as the chief event in a Frontier Day Celebration!

No wonder that Mrs. Manning said to her husband that day, “But Stan, where are the cowboys?”

Stanford Manning answered laughingly, “Oh, they are here, all right, Helen; just wait a little and you will see.”

Mr. and Mrs. Manning had arrived from Cleveland, Ohio, the evening before, and Helen was eager and excited with the prospect of meeting the people, and witnessing the scenes of which her husband had told her with so much enthusiasm.

As the Dean had told Patches that day when the cattleman had advanced the money for the stranger’s outfit, the young mining engineer had won a place for himself amid the scenes and among the people of that western country.  He had first come to the land of this story, fresh from his technical training in the East.  His employers, quick to recognize not only his ability in his profession but his character and manhood, as well, had advanced him rapidly and, less than a month before Patches asked for work at the Cross-Triangle, had sent him on an important mission to their mines in the North.  They were sending him, now, again to Arizona, this time as the resident manager of their properties in the Prescott district.  This new advance in his profession, together with the substantial increase in salary which it brought, meant much to the engineer.  Most of all, it meant his marriage to Helen Wakefield.  A stop-over of two weeks at Cleveland, on way West, from the main offices of his Company in New York, had changed his return to Prescott from a simple business trip to a wedding journey.