This contact with the stagecoach had again brought him face to face with his buried past.

He felt his old dream revive, and occasionally turned to look back upon the dark outlines of Black Spur, under whose shadow it had returned so often, and wondered if he had left it there forever, and it were now slowly exhaling with the thinned and dying smoke of their burning cabin.
His companions, knowing his silent moods, had preceded him at some distance, when he heard the soft sound of ambling hoofs on the thick dust, and suddenly the light touch of Jack Hamlin's gauntlet on his shoulder.

The mustang Jack bestrode was reeking with grime and sweat, but Jack himself was as immaculate and fresh as ever.

With a delightful affectation of embarrassment and timidity he began flicking the side buttons of his velvet vaquero trousers with the thong of his riata.
"I reckoned to sling a word along with you before you went," he said, looking down, "but I'm so shy that I couldn't do it in company.

So I thought I'd get it off on you while you were alone." "We've seen you once or twice before, this morning," said Demorest pleasantly, "and we were sorry you didn't join us." "I reckon I might have," said Jack gayly, "if my horse had only made up his mind whether he was a bird or a squirrel, and hadn't been so various and promiscuous about whether he wanted to climb a tree or fly.