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44 For, around an outjutting, frayed rock that marked the end of the Goat Peak Trail, followed by a lanky, perspiring Palouse farmer youth, laden with most of the pieces of luggage that had crowded the buckboard, came Baron Horst von Götz-Wrede, smiling, debonair, superbly sure of himself, with hand outstretched.

"I have heard so much about your free and open Western hospitality that I decided to have a try at it," he laughed. "Here I am! My word!" he continued in his curiously British accents, "you don't seem a bit glad to see me. Have I broken in on the hermit's meditations about peace and the pure life?"

Tom stiffened. Then, very quickly, he stepped forward and shook the offered hand. For, after all, the man of the Far West is very much akin to the desert Arab in his peculiarly rigid code of honor, his peculiarly sweeping code of hospitality; hospitality even to the blood enemy who touches his tent ropes.

"Glad to see you." He tried to give to the words a ring of that welcome which, deep in his heart, he knew to be missing. Then, pointing at the guns and the fishing rod, "Come here for sport? Not much game here, I am afraid, and the trout are as shy as butterflies."

The Prussian officer had paid off the young farmer and sent him on his way. He turned to Tom with a smile of utter, winning sincerity.

"Mr. Graves," he said, "I have been told by men who know that you Westerners are jolly good poker players, pretty hard to bluff, and so I shall put my cards on the table, face up. Of course I am awfully fond of sport and I'd be glad to pot one of your bighorns. But my real reason in coming here was to have a look at that famous mine of yours, the