he winged his way out of view beyond the edge of the hilltop.

The big man continued to stand with his arms folded, looking in the
direction in which the other had disappeared; he was still shaking with
mirth. When he eventually turned, Riley Sinclair was riding down on him
at a sharp gallop. Strangers do not pass ungreeted in the mountain
desert. There was a wave of the arm to Riley, and he responded by
bringing his horse to a trot, then reining in close to the big man. At
close hand he seemed even larger than from a distance, a burly figure
with ludicrously inadequate support from the narrow-heeled riding
boots. He looked sharply at Riley Sinclair, but his first speech was
for the hard-ridden pony.

"You been putting your hoss through a grind, I see, stranger."

The mustang had slumped into a position of rest, his sides heaving.

"Most generally," said Riley Sinclair, "when I climb into a saddle it
ain't for pleasure--it's to get somewhere."

His voice was surprisingly pleasant. He spoke very deliberately, so
that one felt occasionally that he was pausing to find the right words.
And, in addition to the quality of that deep voice, he had an
impersonal way of looking his interlocutor squarely in the eye, a habit
that pleased the men of the mountain desert. On this occasion his
companion responded at once with a grin. He was a younger man than
Riley Sinclair, but he gave an impression of as much hardness as Riley
himself.

"Maybe you'll be sliding out of the saddle for a minute?" he asked.