He led the way down into a shallow depression which wound aimlessly towards the ocean; and later, when trees and bushes and precipitous bluffs threatened to bar their way, he swung abruptly to the east and south.
"Maybe you won't object so hard to Palo Alto now," he bantered at last, when at dusk he ventured out upon "El Camino Real" (which is pure Spanish for "The King's Highway"), that had linked Mission to Mission all down the fertile length of California when the land was wilderness.

"Solitude ought to feel good, after to-day." When he got no answer, Dade looked around at the other.
Jack's face showed vaguely through the night fog creeping in from the clamorous ocean off to the west.

His legs were hanging free of the stirrups, and his hands rested upon the high saddle-horn.
"Say, Dade," he asked irrelevantly and with a mystifying earnestness, "which do you think would kill a man quickest--a slash across the throat, or a stab in the heart ?" "I wouldn't call either one healthy.

Why ?" "I was just wondering," Jack returned ambiguously.

"If you hadn't happened along--say, how did you happen to come?
Was that another sample of my fool's luck ?" Since the coincidence had not struck him before, one might guess that he was accustomed to having Dade at his elbow when he was most needed.
"Bill Wilson sent word that you were making seven kinds of a fool of yourself--Bill named a few of them--and advised me to get you out of town.