If he had been as unfortunately situated, but with the difference that no man wanted to put him in jail or take his life, he felt that this burning passion to be free, to save himself, might not have been so powerful.

Life certainly held no bright prospects for him.

Already he had begun to despair of ever getting back to his home.

But to give up like a white-hearted coward, to let himself be handcuffed and jailed, to run from a drunken, bragging cowboy, or be shot in cold blood by some border brute who merely wanted to add another notch to his gun--these things were impossible for Duane because there was in him the temper to fight.

In that hour he yielded only to fate and the spirit inborn in him.