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“No, this is a cow camp on the Crossbar Range in the middle of Arizona.”

“Arizona? Six thousand miles from there! How long have I been out of my head?”

“Don’t know. I’ve only known you since sundown. You’ve just gone through a remarkable change of front.”

“What day of the month is it?”

“The third day of December.”

“Hell! Six months ago. It happened in June, Of course, six months is time enough for me to get here, but why can’t I remember coming? Someone must have brought me.”

“Not necessarily. You were walking along, caring for yourself, but hungry. I brought you here for a feed and a night’s sleep.”

“That was kind of you–” He involuntarily raised his hand to his face. “I’ve grown a beard, I see. Let’s see how I look with a beard.” He stepped to a looking-glass on the wall, took one look, and sprang back.

“Why, it isn’t me!” he exclaimed, looking around with dilated eyes. “It’s someone else.”

“Take another look,” I said. He did so, moved his head to the right and left, and then turned to me.

“It must be me,” he said, hoarsely, “for the image in the glass follows my movements. But I’ve lost my face. I’m another man. I don’t know myself.”

“Look at that anchor on your wrist,” I suggested. He did so.

“Yes,” he said, “that part of me is left. It was pricked in on my first voyage.” He examined his arms and legs. “Changed,” he muttered. He rubbed his knees, and passed his hands over his body.

“What year was it when, as you say, you jumped overboard?” I asked.

“Eighteen seventy-five.”

“This is eighteen eighty-four. Matey, you have been nine years out of your head,” I said.

“Nine years? Sure? Can you prove that to me? My God, man, think of it! Nine years gone out of my life. You don’t know what that means to me.”

I showed him a faded and discolored newspaper.

“That paper is about six months old,” I said, “but it’s an eighteen eighty-four paper.”

“Right,” he said, sadly and somewhat wildly. “Got a pipe? I want to smoke on this, and think it out. Nine years, and six thousand miles travel! Where have I been, I wonder, and what have I done, to change the very face of me, while I lived with it? It’s something like death, I take it.”

I gave him a pipe and tobacco, and he smoked vigorously, trembling with excess of emotion, yet slowly pulling himself together. Finally he steadied, but he could not smoke. He put the pipe down, saying that it sickened him. I knew nothing of psychology at the time, but think now that in his second personality he had given up smoking.

I forbore questioning him, knowing that I could not help him in his problem–that he must work it out himself. He did not sleep that night, and kept me awake most of the time with his twitchings and turnings. Once he was up, examining his face in the glass by the light of a match, but in the morning, after a doze of an hour or so, I found him outside, looking at the sunrise and smoking.

“I’m getting used to my new face,” he said, “and I’m getting used to smoking again. Got to. Nothing but a smoke will help a fellow at times. What business is this you’re in here?”

“Cow-punching–riding out after cattle.”

“Hard to learn?”

“Easy for a sailor. I’m only hanging on until pay-day, then I make for ‘Frisco to ship.”

“And someone will take your place, I suppose. I’ll work for my grub if you’ll break me in so that I can get the job. I’m through with going to sea.”

“Certainly. All I need is to tell the boss. I’ve an extra saddle.”

So I tutored him in the tricks of cow-punching, and found him an apt pupil. But he was heavy and depressed, seeming to be burdened with some terrible experience, or memory, that he was trying to shake off. It was not until the evening before my departure, when I had secured him the job and we sat smoking before the mesquite-root fire, that he took me into his confidence. The friendly rat had again appeared, and he sprang up, backed away, and sat down again, trembling violently.