But this he missed.
There was an excuse for the oversight as well as for the speedy blotting
out of the picture of the four men watching him from the porch of the
hotel. With a fairly good horse under him, with the squeak of the
saddle-leather in his ears and the smell of it in his nostrils, and with
the wide world of the immensities into which to ride unhampered and
free, the lost boyhood was found. Not for the most soul-satisfying
professional triumph the fettered East could offer him would he have
curtailed the free-reined flight into the silent wilderness by a single
mile.
For the first half-hour of the invigorating gallop the fugitive from
civilization had the sunset glow to help him find the trail. After that
the moon rose, and the landmarks, which had seemed more or less familiar
in daylight, lost their remembered featurings. During the first few
miles the trail had led broadly across the table-land, with the eastern
mountains withdrawing and the Lost River Range looming larger as its
lofty sky-line was struck out sharply against the sunset horizon.
Farther on, in the transition darkness between sunset and moon-rise, the
trail disappeared entirely; but so long as he was sure of the general
direction, Blount held on and gave the tireless little bronco a loose
rein. The Debbleby ranch lay among the farther foot-hills of the western
range, with the broad gulch of the Pigskin cutting a plain highway
through the mountains.
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