But it was too late, and, as though on second thought, he whirled about
with a half defiant air to face the intruder.

The horseman stopped. He had not missed the significance of that hurried
movement, and his right hand rested carelessly on his leather clad
thigh, while his grey eyes were fixed boldly, inquiringly, almost
challengingly, on the man he had so unintentionally surprised.

As he sat there on his horse, so alert, so ready, in his cowboy garb and
trappings, against the background of Granite Mountain, with all its
rugged, primeval strength, the rider made a striking picture of virile
manhood. Of some years less than thirty, he was, perhaps, neither as
tall nor as heavy as the stranger; but in spite of a certain boyish look
on his smooth-shaven, deeply-bronzed face, he bore himself with the
unmistakable air of a matured and self-reliant man. Every nerve and
fiber of him seemed alive with that vital energy which is the true
beauty and the glory of life.

The two men presented a striking contrast. Without question one was the
proud and finished product of our most advanced civilization. It was as
evident that the splendid manhood of the other had never been dwarfed by
the weakening atmosphere of an over-cultured, too conventional and too
complex environment. The stranger with his carefully tailored clothing
and his man-of-the-world face and bearing was as unlike this rider of
the unfenced lands as a daintily groomed thoroughbred from the
sheltered and guarded stables of fashion is unlike a wild, untamed
stallion from the hills and ranges about Granite Mountain. Yet, unlike
as they were, there was a something that marked them as kin. The man of
the ranges and the man of the cities were, deep beneath the surface of
their beings, as like as the spirited thoroughbred and the unbroken wild