"Oh, that's all right," returned the cowboy heartily. "You're a-goin'
to, an' that's the same thing." Again he started toward the gate.

"But I--pardon me--you are very kind--but I--I prefer to walk."

Once more Joe halted, a puzzled expression on his tanned and
weather-beaten face. "I suppose you know it's some walk," he suggested
doubtfully, as if the man's ignorance were the only possible solution of
his unheard-of assertion.

"So I understand. But it will be good for me. Really, I prefer to walk."

Without a word the cowboy turned back to his horse, and proceeded
methodically to tie the coiled riata in its place on the saddle. Then,
without a glance toward the stranger who stood watching him in
embarrassed silence, he threw the bridle reins over his horse's head,
gripped the saddle horn and swung to his seat, reining his horse away
from the man beside the road.

The stranger, thus abruptly dismissed, moved hurriedly away.

Half way to the creek the cowboy checked his horse and looked back at
the pedestrian as the latter was making his way under the pines and up
the hill. When the man had disappeared over the crest of the hill, the
cowboy muttered a bewildered something, and, touching his horse with the
spurs, loped away, as if dismissing a problem too complex for his simple
mind.

All that day the stranger followed the dusty, unfenced road. Over his