"
The old cattle-king was standing with his feet planted wide apart and
his hands deep in his pockets. "You hired a horse!" he chuckled, with
the humorous wrinkles coming and going at the corners of the kindly
eyes. "Did you have the nerve to think you were going to climb down from
a three-legged stool in a Boston law office one day and ride the fifty
miles from Twin Buttes to the capital the next?"
"Oh, no; I wasn't altogether daft. But knowing where I was, I did think
I could ride out to Debbleby's. So I hired the bronco and set out--and
that reminds me: the horse will have to be sent back to the liveryman in
Twin Buttes, some way."
"Never mind the cayuse. Shackford would have made you a present of it
outright if you had told him who you were. Go on with your story. It
listens like a novel."
"I took the general direction all right on leaving Twin Buttes, and kept
it until I got among the Lost River hogbacks. But after that I was
pretty successfully lost. I'm ashamed to tell it, but about half of the
time the moon didn't seem to be in the right place."
"Lost, were you? And Jack Barto found you?" queried the father.
"Barto hadn't lost me to any appreciable extent," was the half-humorous
emendation. And then: "Who is this ubiquitous Barto who goes around
playing the hold-up one minute and the good angel the next?"
"He is a sort of general utility man for Hathaway, the head pusher of
the Twin Buttes Lumber Company.
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