explained to him just before Billy started south, had been anxious
to get at least four thousand head of young stock on the range that
spring. Something must have gone wrong. Maybe a bank had gone
busted or something like that. Billy stole a glance up at the other,
shambling silently along beside him, and decided that something had
certainly happened--and on the heels of that he remembered oddly that
he had felt almost exactly like this when Miss Bridger had asked him
to show her where was the coffee, and there _wasn't_ any coffee. There
was the same heavy feeling in his chest, and the same--

"I wrote you a letter three or four days ago--on the third, to be
exact," Dill was saying. "I don't suppose it reached you, however. I
was going to have you meet me in Hardup; but then your telegram was
forwarded to me there and I came on here at once. I only arrived this
morning. I think that after we have something to eat we would better
start out immediately, unless you have other plans. I drove over in
a rig, and as the horses have rested several hours and are none the
worse for the drive, I think we can easily make the return trip this
afternoon."

"You're the doctor," assented Billy briefly, more uneasy than
before and yet not quite at the point of asking questions. In his
acquaintance with Dill he had learned that it was not always wise to
question too closely; where Dill wished to give his confidence he gave
it freely, but beyond the limit he had fixed for himself was a stone
wall, masked by the flowers, so to speak, of his unfailing courtesy.
Billy had once or twice inadvertently located that wall.

A great depression seized upon him and made him quite indifferent
to the little pleasures of homecoming; of seeing the grass green and