"No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them that are exercised thereby."—Heb. 12:11.
Rupert Ames had ridden all day, resting only at noon to permit his horse to graze. As for himself, he was not tired. The long pent-up energy had begun to escape, and it seemed that he could have ridden, or walked, or in any way worked hard for a long time without need of rest. Move, move he must. He had been dormant long enough; thinking, thinking, nothing but that for months. It would have driven him mad had he not made a change. Where was he going? No one knew; Rupert himself did not know; anywhere for a change; anywhere to get away, for a time, from the scenes and remembrances of the valley and town of Willowby.
At dark he rode into a village at the mouth of a gorge. Lights gleamed from the windows. A strong breeze came from the gorge, and the trees which lined the one stony street all leaned away from the mountain. Rupert had never been in the place before, but he had heard of Windtown. Was there a hotel? he asked a passer-by. No; but they took lodgers at Smith's, up the hill. At Smith's he, therefore, put up his horse and secured supper and bed. Until late at night he walked up and down Windtown's one street, and even climbed the cliffs above the town.
Next morning he was out early, and entered the canyon as the sun began to illumine its rocky domes and cast long shafts of light across the chasm. A summer morning ride through a canyon of the Rockies is always an inspiration, but Rupert was not conscious of it. Again, at noon, he fed his horse a bag of grain, and let him crop the scanty bunch-grass on the narrow hillside. A slice of bread from his pocket, dipped into the clear stream, was his own meal. Then, out of the canyon, and up the mountain, and over the divide he went. All that afternoon he rode over a stretch of sagebrush plain. It was nearly midnight when he stopped at a mining camp. In the morning he sold his horse for three twenty-dollar gold pieces, and with his bundle on his back, walked to the railroad station, a distance of seven miles.
"I want a ticket," said he to the man at the little glass window.
"Where to?"
"To—to—well, to Chicago."
The man looked suspiciously at Rupert, and then turned to a card hanging on the wall.
"Twenty-eight-fifty," he said.
Two of the gold pieces were shoved under the glass, and Rupert received his ticket and his change.