Twenty miles out, the stranger leaned forward and tapped him
lightly on the knee. "Say, I hate to interrupt yuh," he began in
a whimsical drawl, evidently characteristic of the man, "but I'd
like to know where it is I've seen yuh before."

Thurston glanced up impersonally, hesitated between annoyance
and a natural desire to, be courteous, and replied that he had
no memory of any previous meeting.

"Mebby not," admitted the other, and searched the face of
Thurston with his keen eyes. It came to Phil that they were
also a bit wistful, but he went unsympathetically back to his
reading.

Five miles more and be touched Thurston again, apologetically
yet insistently. "Say," he drawled, "ain't your name Thurston?
I'll bet a carload uh steers it is--Bud Thurston. And your home
range is Fort Benton."

Phil stared and confessed to all but the "Bud."

"That's what me and your dad always called yuh," the man
asserted. "Well, I'll be hanged! But I knew it. I knew I'd run
acrost yuh somewheres. You're the dead image uh your dad, Bill
Thurston. And me and Bill freighted together from Whoop-up to
Benton along in the seventies. Before yuh was born we was chums.
I don't reckon you'd remember me? Hank Graves, that used to
pack yuh around on his back, and fill yuh up on dried prunes--
when dried prunes was worth money? Yuh used to call 'em