He blindfolded the big, belligerent horse to mount him.  When his feet were securely thrust into his stirrups he leaned forward and with a swift jerk snapped the handkerchief from the horse’s eyes.  For a moment the animal’s sides between his knees trembled and throbbed like an overtaxed engine.  Then there was the sudden jerk which told of a mighty bunching of muscles, a gathering of force.  And as Conniston shot his spurs home, with the reins gripped tight in his left hand so that the horse could not get his head down, the forelegs were lifted high in air as the animal reared.  A quick blow of the quirt and the forelegs sought earth again, and Conniston began to realize what it was to ride a bucking bronco.

A series of short jumps, every one threatening to unseat him, every one jerking him so that his body was whipped this way and that, so that he had much ado to keep his feet from flying out of the stirrups, and could hardly hold his right hand back from going to the horn, from “pulling leather.”  The bucks came so close together that it seemed to him that he did not rest a second in the saddle; that each time the big brute struck the ground with his four feet bunched together, to pause for a breathless moment, gathering every ounce of strength to wrench, leaping sideways, he must surely be thrown.  But in spite of all he did not pull leather, he did not cease to ply spur and quirt, and he was not thrown.  It was a perfectly quiet horse he rode away across the fields only three minutes later.

He did a man’s work that day, all that day, until long after the red sun had gone down.  And when he came up from the corral to his supper, if he was tired, if the muscles of his body ached, it did not show in his steady stride or in his quiet eyes.

The suit-case which he had left in Indian Creek had been brought out last week.  He shaved himself and changed his clothes, putting on the first white silk shirt he had worn for many a day.  He even found an old can of shoe-polish and touched up the pair of dusty shoes.  And then, laughing at the looks the men turned upon him, at the few jesting remarks which they chose to make, he walked through the trees and to the range-house.

The glow of electric lights through the wide-opened front doors ran out across the lawn to meet him.  Striding along the walk, his heels crunching in the white gravel, he again marveled at the comfort, the luxury even, which John Crawford had brought across the desert.  He ran lightly up the broad steps.  Before he could ring Argyl was at the door, her eyes quick to find his searchingly.  He knew what they sought to find in his.  And when she put out her hand to him, swiftly, impulsively, he trusted that they had found what they sought.

He followed her through the big front room and into the library.  Here there were many deep, soft leather chairs, here there was a blue atmosphere of tobacco smoke, and here Mr. Crawford, immaculate in white flannels, rose to meet him, his hand outstretched.