Bartley happened to be alone on the veranda of the Antelope House that
evening. Senator Brown and his "missus" had departed for their ranch.
Mrs. Senator Brown had been a bit diffident when first meeting Bartley,
but he soon put her at her ease with some amusing stories of Eastern
experiences. The dinner concluded with an invitation from Mrs. Brown
that anticipated Bartley visiting the ranch and staying as long as he
wished. The day following the Senator's departure Bartley received a
telegram from his friend in California, wishing him good luck and a
pleasant journey in the Arizona country. The friend would see to
Bartley's baggage, as Bartley had forwarded the claim checks in his
letter.

The town was quiet and the stars were serenely brilliant. The dusty,
rutted road past the hotel, dim gray in the starlight, muffled the tread
of an occasional Navajo pony passing in the faint glow of light from the
doorway. Bartley was content with things as he found them, just then.
But he knew that he would eventually go away from there--from the untidy
town, the railroad, the string of box-cars on the siding, and seek the
new, the unexpected, an experience to be had only by kicking loose from
convention and stepping out for himself. He thought of writing a Western
story. He realized that all he knew of the West was from hearsay, and a
brief contact with actual Westerners. He would do better to go out in
the fenceless land and live a story, and then write it. And better
still, he would let chance decide where and when he would go.

His first intimation that chance was in his vicinity was the distant,
faint cadence of a song that floated over the night-black mesa from the
north. Presently he heard the soft, muffled tread of horses and a
distinct word or two of the song. He leaned forward, interested, amused,
alert. The voice was a big voice, mellowed by distance. There was a