yearn for the companionship of his humble associates--the teamster, the
scout Gildersleeve, and even Jim Hooker. But above all and before all
was the wild desire to get away from these maddening streets and
their bewildering occupants. He ran back to the baker's, gathered his
purchases together, took advantage of a friendly doorway to strap them
on his boyish shoulders, slipped into a side street, and struck out at
once for the outskirts.

It had been his first intention to take stage to the nearest mining
district, but the diminution of his small capital forbade that outlay,
and he decided to walk there by the highroad, of whose general direction
he had informed himself. In half an hour the lights of the flat,
struggling city, and their reflection in the shallow, turbid river
before it, had sunk well behind him. The air was cool and soft; a yellow
moon swam in the slight haze that rose above the tules; in the distance
a few scattered cottonwoods and sycamores marked like sentinels the
road. When he had walked some distance he sat down beneath one of them
to make a frugal supper from the dry rations in his pack, but in the
absence of any spring he was forced to quench his thirst with a glass of
water in a wayside tavern. Here he was good-humoredly offered
something stronger, which he declined, and replied to certain curious
interrogations by saying that he expected to overtake his friends in a
wagon further on. A new distrust of mankind had begun to make the boy
an adept in innocent falsehood, the more deceptive as his careless,
cheerful manner, the result of his relief at leaving the city, and his
perfect ease in the loving companionship of night and nature, certainly
gave no indication of his homelessness and poverty.

It was long past midnight, when, weary in body, but still hopeful and
happy in mind, he turned off the dusty road into a vast rolling expanse