street, and Bill Dunham's horse must have stepped lively. There wasn't a clump of bushes big enough to hide a horse within the limit of human vision; not a ravine, not a hill. The land spread away there toward the east as level as if the sea which once covered it had drained off only a little while ago, such a little while, indeed, that the grass had not got much of a start.
Nearly every building along the street had its shanty stable in the back, for that was a country where a man's legs were very short in the vast spaces between spots on the map. Dunham was unable to account for the rapid disappearance of the horse. Only a few minutes had passed since he turned the animal into the barn. It could not have gone far, perhaps across the railroad, where it might be picking around behind the string of boarding cars.
But it was not there. The same red-armed, manly woman who had refused to feed him a few days before, and the bleary, hairy, ashy consort who had ordered him to make tracks for the favored point of consignment in Pawnee Bend, answered his inquiries graciously, even eagerly. They came down out of the car in their desire to show friendly coöperation, for Dunham was known to everybody on both sides of the tracks by that time, by name and fame, if not by sight. He was a man to be propitiated. They would have set a special table for him in the boarding train that morning if he had asked for a meal.
No, they hadn't seen a horse with saddle and bridle on roaming around over there. Toward the south the
