I've no wish to shirk a duty to my family." Bud pressed his lips together while he listened.

"If you keep your ten thousand till it's called for, you'll be drawing interest a long time on it," He said.

"It's going to be hot to-day.

I'll be getting along." He lifted the reins, glanced back to see that the two horses were showing the proper disposition to follow, and rode off down the deep-rutted road that followed up the creek to the pass where he had watched the Utes dancing the war dance one night that he remembered well.

If he winced a little at the familiar landmarks he passed, he still held fast to the determination to go, and to find fortune somewhere along the trail of his own making; and to ask help from no man, least of all his father who had told him to go..