So that it was not until evening was well advanced that Sunset learned that Ford was no longer a potential menace within its meager boundaries.

Bill took a long breath, observed meaningly that "He'd _better_ go--whilst his credit's good, by hokey!" and for the first time that day sat down with his back toward an outer door.
Ford was not worrying about Sunset half as much as Sunset was worrying about him.

He was at that moment playing pinochle half-heartedly with a hospitable sheep-herder, under the impression that, since his host had frankly and profanely professed a revulsion against solitaire and a corresponding hunger for pinochle, his duty as a guest lay in satisfying that hunger.

He played apathetically, overlooked several melts he might have made, and so lost three games in succession to the gleeful herder, who had needed the diversion almost as much as he needed a hair-cut.
His sense of social responsibility being eased thereby, Ford took his headache and his dull disgust with life to the wall side of the herder's frowsy bunk, and straightway forgot both in heavy slumber, leaving to the morrow any definite plan for the near future--the far future being as little considered as death and what is said to lie beyond.
That day had done for him all he asked of it.

It had put him thirty miles and more from Sunset, against which he felt a resentment which it little deserved; of a truth it was as inoffensive a hamlet as any in that region, and its sudden, overweening desire for a jail was but a legitimate impulse toward self-preservation.