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 indiscretion, as if he feared somebody had caught him at it and would bring it up against him in due time.

While he was not troubled over his own situation to any worrisome extent, he could not forbear speculating on the future, or wonder where he was to take up the lost reins of his somewhat erratic destiny and begin driving a straight course again. If the livery driver had it right, there was trouble waiting for him at Drumwell. Certainly there was nothing else, the business possibilities of the town for a man out of a job being next to nothing at all.

The town marshal would have a grudge against him as well as that crab of a man who carried his head on his shoulder, as if it were another man's head that he had picked up on the road and was bringing home. Drumwell was a good enough place to avoid.

He considered Wellington, where he might resume his original intention of adventuring into the Panhandle, the trunk railroad line running through that place; and of Wichita, famed throughout the southwest as a cattlemen's centre. He had only a few dollars, a very few dollars. And there was no way for a man without a horse to travel except by rail. He might be obliged to return to Drumwell, it appeared as if he would be forced to do so, to resume his indefinite way.

At Drumwell he might get a ride on a stock train as far as Wellington or Wichita. He plotted a definite course, ending satisfactorily at either place. That would be the program: Wellington or Wichita. So much decided, he left it there.

They accepted his return at the Ellison ranch as a