"Looking back, I can't just say what it was," he presently replied, in a
hard, matter-of-fact tone. "You see, one's feelings can change, Sarge.
It looks different to me now than it did then. I reckon I could have
written essays on the futility of sentiment, and the damned silliness of
a man who thinks he cares for a woman. But I'm past that stage. And so
I can't say for sure just how it was or why. Something came up between
me and Lyn--and I drifted, and kept drifting. Went through Colorado,
Wyoming, Montana; finally rambled here, and went into the Force
because--well, because a man with anything to him can go to the top. A
man must play at something, and this looked like a good game."

There was a note of something that I'd never heard in MacRae's voice
before; neither bitterness nor anger nor sorrow nor lonesomeness, and
yet there was a hint of each, but so slight, so elusive I couldn't grasp
it. I remembered that the last sentence MacRae had spoken to me in the
South was a message to Lyn Rowan, a message that I never had the
pleasure of delivering, for my hasty flitting took me out other trails
than the one that led to the home ranch. And so they had parted--gone
different ways--probably in anger. Well, that's only another example of
the average human's cussedness. Lyn could be just as haughty as she was
sweet and gracious, which was natural enough, seeing she'd ruled a
cattle king and all his sunburned riders since she was big enough to
toddle alone; and Gordon MacRae wasn't the sort of man who would come to
heel at any woman's bidding--at least, he wasn't in the old days. Oh, I
could understand how it happened, all right. Each of them was chuck full
of that dubious sort of pride that has busted up more than one
love-_fiesta_.

Neither of us spoke again, and at length the squat log buildings of Pend
d' Oreille loomed ahead of us in the night. Tired and hungry, we stabled