“Beat it!  You old reprobate!” called the Texan as he followed him up the slope.

“How’m I goin’ to git my boat back?” whined Long Bill, as the Texan coiled his rope.

“Swim acrost.  Or, maybe you’d better go ’round—­it’s some little further that way, but it’s safer if you can’t swim.  I’ll leave your guns in the boat.  So long, an’ be sure to remember not to furget sometime an’ pay me back that twenty.”

The ride to Timber City was made almost in silence.  Only once did the Texan speak.  It was when they passed a band of sheep grazing beside the road:  “They’re minin’ the country,” he said, thoughtfully.  “The time ain’t far off when we’ll have to turn nester—­or move on.”

“Where?” asked Alice.

The cowboy shrugged, and the girl detected a note of unconscious sadness in his tone:  “I don’t know.  I reckon there ain’t any place for me.  The whole country’s about wired in.”

Timber City, since abandoned to the bats and the coyotes, but then in her glory, consisted of two stores, five saloons, a half-dozen less reputable places of entertainment, a steepleless board church, a schoolhouse, also of boards, a hotel, a post office, a feed stable, fifty or more board shacks of miners, and a few flimsy buildings at the mouths of shafts.  It was nearly noon when the three drew up before the hotel.

“Will you dine with us in an hour?” asked Endicott.

The Texan nodded.  “Thanks,” he said, formally, “I’ll be here.”  And as the two disappeared through the door, he gathered up the reins, crossed to the feed barn where he turned the animals over to the proprietor, and passing on to the rear, proceeded to take a bath in the watering trough.

Punctually on the minute he entered the hotel.  The meal was a solemn affair, almost as silent as the ride from the river.  Several attempts at conversation fell flat, and the effort was abandoned.  At no time, however, did the Texan appear embarrassed, and Alice noted that he handled his knife and fork with the ease of early training.

At the conclusion he arose, abruptly:  “I thank you.  Will you excuse me, now?”

Alice nodded, and both watched as he crossed the room, his spurs trailing noisily upon the wooden floor.

“Poor devil,” said Endicott, “this has hit him pretty hard.”

The girl swallowed the rising lump in her throat:  “Oh, why can’t he meet some nice girl, and——­”

“Women—­his kind—­are mighty scarce out here, I imagine.”

The girl placed her elbows upon the table, rested her chin upon her knuckles, and glanced eagerly into Endicott’s face: 

“Win, you’ve just got to buy a ranch,” she announced, the words fairly tumbling over each other in her excitement.  “Then we can come out here part of the time and live, and we can invite a lot of girls out for the summer—­I just know oodles of nice girls—­and Tex can manage the ranch, and——­”