The hoe he left where it stood.

"I'll git the nag," he announced briefly, and swung off without
further parley toward the curling spiral of smoke that marked a cabin a
quarter of a mile below. Ten minutes later, his bare feet swung against
the ribs of a gray mule, and his rifle lay balanced across the
unsaddled withers. Sally sat mountain fashion behind him, facing
straight to the side.

So they came along the creek bed and into the sight of the man who
still sat propped against the mossy rock. As Lescott looked up, he
closed the case of his watch, and put it back into his pocket with a
smile.

"Snappy work, that!" he called out. "Just thirty-three minutes. I
didn't believe it could be done."

Samson's face was mask-like, but, as he surveyed the foreigner, only
the ingrained dictates of the country's hospitable code kept out of his
eyes a gleam of scorn for this frail member of a sex which should be
stalwart.

"Howdy?" he said. Then he added suspiciously: "What mout yer business
be in these parts, stranger?"

Lescott gave the odyssey of his wanderings, since he had rented a mule
at Hixon and ridden through the country, sketching where the mood
prompted and sleeping wherever he found a hospitable roof at the coming
of the evening.