Then, when their decision had been taken, he remembered the abrupt falling back of the man into the quiet, almost monosyllabic manner which usually belonged to him.

Yes, Buck was a good lad.

The thought carried him back to days long gone by, to a time when a lad of something less than eight years, clad in the stained and worn garb of a prairie juvenile, his feet torn and bleeding, his large brown eyes staring out of gaunt, hungry sockets, his thin, pinched, sunburnt face drawn by the ravages of starvation, had cheerfully hailed him from beneath the shelter of a trail-side bush.

That was nearly twenty years ago, but every detail of the meeting was still fresh in his memory. His horse had shied at the sudden challenge. He remembered he had thrashed the creature with his spurs. And promptly had come the youthful protest.

“Say, you needn’t to lick him, mister,” the boy piped in his thin treble. “Guess he’ll stand if you talk to him.”

Strangely enough the man had almost unconsciously obeyed the mandate. And the memory of it made him smile now. Then had followed a dialogue, which even now had power to stir every sympathy of his heart. He started by casually questioning the starving apparition.

“Where you from, sonny?” he asked.

And with that unequivocal directness, which, after twenty years, still remained with him, the boy flung out a thin arm in the direction of the eastern horizon.

“Back ther’, mister.”

The natural sequence was to ask him whither he was bound, and his answer came with a similar gesture with his other hand westward.

“Yonder.”

“But—but who’re your folks? Where are they?” the Padre had next hazarded. And a world of desolation was contained in the lad’s half-tearful reply—

“Guess I ain’t got none. Pop an’ ma’s dead. Our farm was burnt right out. Y’ see there was a prairie fire. It was at night, an’ we was abed. Pop got me out, an’ went back for ma. I never see him agin. I never see ma. An’ ther’ wa’an’t no farm left. Guess they’re sure dead.”

He fought the tears back manfully, in a way that set the Padre marveling at his courage.

After a moment he continued his interrogation.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Buck,” came the frank response.

“Buck—what?”

“Buck—jest plain, mister.”

“But your father’s name—what was that?”

“Pop.”

“Yes, yes. That’s what you called him. What did the folks call him?”

“Ther’ wa’an’t no folks. Jest pop, an’ ma, an’ me.”

A great lump had risen in the man’s throat as he looked down into those honest, hungry eyes. And for a moment he was at a loss. But the boy solved his dilemma in a way that proved the man in after-life.

“Say, you ain’t a farmer?” he inquired, with a speculative glance over his general outfit.

“Well, I am—in a small way,” the Padre had replied, with a half-smile.

The boy brightened at once.

“Then mebbe you can give me a job—I’m lookin’ for a job.”

The wonder of it all brought a great smile of sympathy to the man’s eyes now, as he thought of that little starving lad of eight years old, homeless, wandering amidst the vastness of all that world—looking for a “job.” It was stupendous, and he had sat marveling until the lad brought him back to the business in hand.

“Y’ see I kin milk—an’—an’ do chores around. Guess I can’t plough yet. Pop allus said I was too little. But mebbe I kin grow—later. I—I don’t want no wages—on’y food. Guess I’m kind o’ hungry, mister.”

Nor, for a moment, could the man make any reply. The pathos of it all held him in its grip. He leant over and groped in his saddle-bag for the “hardtack” biscuits he always carried, and passed the lad a handful.

He remembered how the boy snatched the rough food from his hands.