Lonesome Town. James French Dorrance

The trail spilled into a pool of shadows at the bottom of the gorge. As if doubtful of following it, the lone rider in chaps and a flannel shirt drew up for a “breathing.” This was gratefully advantaged by his mount. Evidently they had come at speed, whatever the distance, for the reins were lathered and foam flecked the bit corners.

The man removed his white sombrero and mopped his brow with a purple bandanna. The fingers with which he combed back his moist thatch nicely matched the hair in color—sunburn brown. His head bulged slightly at the back, but was balanced on a neck and shoulders splendidly proportioned. His rather plain face was not covered with stubble or mustache—cheek bones high, jaw sloping in at an angle, nose straight, lips thin by contrast with their width.

While he rests in his saddle, every pore of him exuding healthfully to the midsummer heat of an unusual spring, meet “Why-Not” Pape, of Hellroaring Valley, Montana. But don’t expect to understand—not at first hand grasp—how one christened Peter Stansbury Pape some thirty-odd years before, had come by his interrogatory sobriquet. No more could you have seen in his expression excuse for the pace to which he had put his horse. His eyes—the best of his features—looked pleased and told of peace with the world; gray, with dark lashes and irises, they scanned the granite wall rising sheer from the trail-side. Sighting a bull snake that peered down at him from its crevasse, both of them smiled and one amiably winked.

You must have been something of a psychoanalyst—able to go below the surface of day-time and sleep-time dreams—to have realized the unreliability in this case of surface indications. Only by such super-sight could you have seen that Why-Not Pape merely appeared to be peaceful and pleased. As a matter of fact, his head and his heart were heavy with disappointment. But then, a subject so deep and personal shouldn’t be broached at this first formal introduction.

Meet also, if you please, Polkadot Pape, a cross-bred cow-pony who soon could quip the interest of any horse-worthy he-man and who, by virtue of his weird and wicked style of beauty, could command the admiration of the fair. Had you stood on the trail before him and made the slightest friendly overture, he would have bent a foreleg—the right one—and offered you a hoof-shake without so much as a nudge from the rider who most times was his master-mind. Contrary to the suggestion of his given name, his coat was not dotted; rather, was splotched with three colors—sorrel and black on a background of white. The extra splotch took him out of the pinto class and made him a horse apart. And always he gaited himself with the distinctive style of the bold, black spot beneath his left eye. This late afternoon, however, despite the toss of his head and swish of his long white tail, his manner, like his man’s, was superficial—the mere reflex from a habit of keeping up appearances. Circumstances over which he had no control darkened around him like a swarm of horse-flies.

Below a shadow pool lured. Beyond, the thin trail beckoned. Pape glanced upward. A white circle upon a dying elm—one of a group that struggled for their lives up over the rocks forming the east side of the gorge—caught his eye. Above he saw a second white circle upon a half-withered red birch; still higher, a third upon a bald cypress. Aware that no elm, birch, or cypress, alive or half alive or dead, reproduced perfect white circles on its trunk, he decided that these had been painted there with a purpose by the hand of man.

His desire to follow a trail so oddly blazed was indulged as quickly as born. The caress of one knee against saddle leather and the lightest lift of rein notified his tricolored steed. Polkadot sprang from

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