"Father!"—and "Evan, boy!" were the simple words of greeting; but the mighty hand-grip which went with them was for the younger man a confirmation of the filial hope and a heart-warming promise for the future. Following instantly, there came a rush of mingled emotions: of astoundment that he had recognized no familiar landmark in the midnight faring through the hills or on the approach to the home of his childhood; of something akin to keen regret that the old had given place so thoroughly and completely to the new; of a feeling bordering on chagrin that he had been surprised into accepting the hospitable advances of a woman whom he had been intending to avoid, and for whom he had hitherto cherished—and meant to cherish—a settled aversion.
But at the hand-gripping moment there was no time for a nice weighing of emotions. He was in his father's house; the home-coming, some phases of which he had vaguely dreaded, was a fact accomplished, and the new life—the life which must be lived without Patricia—was fairly begun. Also, there were many arrears to be brought up.
"Intuition, on the manward side of it at least, doesn't go," he was saying with half-boyish candor. "I was awake last night when you drove home in the motor, and I looked out of the window and saw you as you came up the steps. According to the psychics, there ought to have been some inward stirrings of recognition, but there weren't—not a single thrill. Did the little—er—did Mrs. Blount tell you that I was here?"
"She did so; but she couldn't tell me much more. Say, son, how on top of earth did you happen to blow in at midnight, with Jack Barto for your herd leader?"
"It's a fairy tale, and you won't believe it—of a Blount," was the laughing reply. "I left Boston Monday, and should have reached the capital last night. But my train was laid out by a yard wreck at Twin Buttes just before dark, and I left it and took to the hills—horseback. Don't ask me why I did such a thing as that; I can only say that the smell of the sage-brush got into my blood and I simply had to do it."
The old cattle-king was standing with his feet planted wide apart and his hands deep in his pockets. "You hired a horse!" he chuckled, with the humorous wrinkles coming and going at the corners of the kindly eyes. "Did you have the nerve to think you were going to climb down from a three-legged stool in a Boston law office one day and ride the fifty miles from Twin Buttes to the capital the next?"
"Oh, no; I wasn't altogether daft. But knowing where I was, I did think I could ride out to Debbleby's. So I hired the bronco and set out—and that reminds me: the horse will have to be sent back to the liveryman in Twin Buttes, some way."
"Never mind the cayuse. Shackford would have made you a present of it outright if you had told him who you were. Go on with your story. It listens like a novel."
"I took the general direction all right on leaving Twin Buttes, and kept it until I got among the Lost River hogbacks. But after that I was pretty successfully lost. I'm ashamed to tell it, but about half of the time the moon didn't seem to be in the right place."
"Lost, were you? And Jack Barto found you?" queried the father.