"You never want to go back?" the older man ventured.
VB did not answer for a long time. When he did he said: "Some day I shall go back, Jed, but not to stay. I will not go back, either, until I've come to be as good and as strong a man as the Captain is a good and strong horse. That's something to set up as a goal, isn't it? But I mean every word. When I left the city I was—nothing. When I go back I want to be everything that a man should be—as this old fellow is everything that a horse should be."
He leaned forward and pulled the Captain's ears fondly, while the stallion champed the bit and lifted his forefeet high in play. VB straightened then, and looked dreamily ahead.
"I hope that time will come before a man there gets to the end of things. He was hard with me, my father, Jed—mighty hard. But I know he was right. Perhaps I'm not doing all I could for his comfort, perhaps I'm making a bad gamble, but when I go back I want to be as I believe every man can be—at some time in his life."
He turned his eyes on the little, huddled figure that rode at his side.
"Then, when I've seen New York once more, with all its artificiality and dishonest motives and its unrealities—from the painted faces of its women to its very reasons for living and doing—I'll come back here, Jed; back to the Captain and to the hills.
"I've seen the other! Oh, I've seen it, not from the ground up, but from the ground down! I've gone to the very subcellars of rottenness—and there's nothing to attract. But here there's a bigness, a freedom, an incentive to be real that you won't find in places where men huddle together and lie and cheat and scheme!"
They returned to the ranch in late afternoon and found that a passing cowboy had left mail for them—papers and circulars—and a picture postal card. VB had picked up the bundle of mail first, and for a long time he gazed at the gaudy colorings of that card. Palm trees, faultlessly kept lawns, a huge, rambling building set back from the road that formed a foreground, and a glimpse of a superblue Pacific in the distance. He held it in his fingers and took in every detail. Then, with a queer little feeling about his middle, he turned it over. A small hand—he remembered just how firm the fingers were that held the pen—had written:
Mr. VB
Ranger, Colorado
And across the correspondence section of the card was inscribed this: