He gave his spurs to Johnnie before he left the ranch. At
Tucson he shed his chaps and left them in care of a friend at the
Longhorn Corral. The six-gun with which he had shot rattlesnakes he
packed into his suitcase at El Paso. His wide-rimmed felt hat flew off
while the head beneath it was stuck out of a window of the coach
somewhere south of Denver. Before he passed under the Welcome Arch in
that city the silk kerchief had been removed from his brown neck and
retired to the hip pocket which formerly held his forty-five.
The young cattleman began to flatter himself that nobody could now tell
he was a wild man from the hills who had never been curried. He might
have spared himself the illusion. Everybody he met knew that this
clean-cut young athlete, with the heavy coat of tan on his good-looking
face, was a product of the open range. The lightness of his stride,
the breadth of the well-packed shoulders, the frankness of the steady
eyes, all advertised him a son of Arizona.
It was just before noon at one of the small plains towns east of Denver
that a girl got on the train and was taken by the porter to a section
back of Clay Lindsay. The man from Arizona noticed that she was
refreshingly pretty in an unsophisticated way.
A little later he had a chance to confirm this judgment, for the
dining-car manager seated her opposite him at a table for two. When
Clay handed her the menu card she murmured "Thank you!" with a rush of
color to her cheeks and looked helplessly at the list in her hand.
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