"But ain't a guy got no rights in this country?"
"Certainly he has. But he has to prove that he is entitled to them, by his way of living."
"Then he's got to go to church, and work, and live decent, or he don't get a square deal, hey?"
Collie did not answer. Instead, he inspected his questioner critically from head to foot. "I guess you're right," he said finally. "I've heard folks talk like that before, but I never took no stock. They kind of said it because they knowed it. I guess you say it because you mean it."
"Of course I do," said Stone heartily. "Well, here comes my niece with the mail. See! Over there is El Camino Real, running north. My ranch is up _there_, in the hills. My foreman's name is Williams. If you should ask him for work, I believe he might give you something to do. I heard him say he needed a man, not long ago."
Walter Stone cinched up the saddle and mounted his pony. The boy's eyes shone as he gazed at the strong, soldierly figure. Ah, to look like that, and ride a horse like that!
Boyar, the black pony, clattered up and stopped. "Hello, folks!" said Louise, purposely including the boy in her greeting.
Collie flushed happily. Then a bitterness grew in his heart as he thought of his friend Overland, hunted from town to town by the same law that protected these people--an unjust law that they observed and fostered.
Collie's gaze was on the ground. "I don' know," he muttered. "I don' know."
"Well, good luck to you!" And the ponies swung into that philosophical lope of the Western horse who knows his journey's length.
The figures of the riders grew smaller. Still the boy stood in the road, watching them. Undecided, he gazed. Then came an answer to his stubborn self-questioning. Louise glanced back--glanced back for an instant in mute sympathy with his loneliness.
Slowly the boy turned and entered the jail. He folded his coat over his arm, stepped outside, and closed the door.
Before him stretched the hot gray level of El Camino Real, the road to the beyond. From it branched a narrower road, reaching up into the southern hills,--on, up to the mysterious Moonstone Cañon with its singing stream and its gracious shade. Somewhere beyond, higher, and in the shadowy fastness of the great ranges lay the Moonstone Ranch ... her home.