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 that he had tramped with Zora Moore the night before, over ground almost sacred to him out of its romantic traditions of the past. Here that hardy red-bearded uncle of his had journeyed back and forth between Independence and Santa Fé as wagon boss in the old freighting days. Many an adventurous tale Bill Dunham treasured away in his memory from the tongue of that bold-spirited man, whose eyes had looked upon these very scenes when perils shadowed every mile.

They were gone long ago, those times, thought Bill, and there was no more romance left in the world, in spite of the belief that had deluded him into venturing there. It was a sordid and depressing business when such a man as Kellogg pushed a quarrel and crowded a man until he had to slay in self-defense. A man could find romance of that kind in Kansas City, where there was shooting enough going on every day.

There was no aureate tint around the edges of that kind of stuff; it was not the romance Bill Dunham had taken it to be, this thing that pulled youth out of his heart as a greedy despoiler grabs flower, plant and all, leaving him with that old and lonely feeling pressing him down like a clod on a hill of corn.

It was a matter of fifty miles from Pawnee Bend to the line, Garland had told him, leaving it to his own contriving to get there next day without wearing his horse out, a thing of which he had not spoken. Bill, accustomed to the more civilized, furrow-plodding horses of lower altitudes, did not know what endurance was in the little brown bony creature that he straddled. It would have eaten up fifty miles without a stop and