The stranger, thus abruptly dismissed, moved hurriedly away.

Half way to the creek the cowboy checked his horse and looked back at the pedestrian as the latter was making his way under the pines and up the hill.  When the man had disappeared over the crest of the hill, the cowboy muttered a bewildered something, and, touching his horse with the spurs, loped away, as if dismissing a problem too complex for his simple mind.

All that day the stranger followed the dusty, unfenced road.  Over his head the wide, bright sky was without a cloud to break its vast expanse.  On the great, open range of mountain, flat and valley the cattle lay quietly in the shade of oak or walnut or cedar, or, with slow, listless movement, sought the watering places to slake their thirst.  The wild things retreated to their secret hiding places in rocky den and leafy thicket to await the cool of the evening hunting hour.  The very air was motionless, as if the never-tired wind itself drowsed indolently.

And alone in the hushed bigness of that land the man walked with his thoughts—­brooding, perhaps, over whatever it was that had so strangely placed him there—­dreaming, it may be, over that which might have been, or that which yet might be—­viewing with questioning, wondering, half-fearful eyes the mighty, untamed scenes that met his eye on every hand.  Nor did anyone see him, for at every sound of approaching horse or vehicle he went aside from the highway to hide in the bushes or behind convenient rocks.  And always when he came from his hiding place to resume his journey that odd smile of self-mockery was on his face.

At noon he rested for a little beside the road while he ate a meager sandwich that he took from the pocket of his coat.  Then he pushed on again, with grim determination, deeper and deeper into the heart and life of that world which was, to him, so evidently new and strange.  The afternoon was well spent when he made his way—­wearily now, with drooping shoulders and dragging step—­up the long slope of the Divide that marks the eastern boundary of the range about Williamson Valley.

At the summit, where the road turns sharply around a shoulder of the mountain and begins the steep descent on the other side of the ridge, he stopped.  His tired form straightened.  His face lighted with a look of wondering awe, and an involuntary exclamation came from his lips as his unaccustomed eyes swept the wide view that lay from his feet unrolled before him.

Under that sky, so unmatched in its clearness and depth of color, the land lay in all its variety of valley and forest and mesa and mountain—­a scene unrivaled in the magnificence and grandeur of its beauty.  Miles upon miles in the distance, across those primeval reaches, the faint blue peaks and domes and ridges of the mountains ranked—­an uncounted sentinel host.  The darker masses of the timbered hillsides, with the varying shades of pine and cedar, the lighter tints of oak brush and