the baby
was three days old and the mother and boy were reported by the nurse to
be coming along like kittens--that the following Saturday would be "open
day" at the Mountain House--Tenison's new and almost palatial hotel; with
the proprietor standing host for the town and the countryside.

Before the week was out this word had swept through the mountains, from
the stretches of the Thief River on the South to the recesses of the
Lodge Poles on the North. It was the one topic of interest for the week
on the range. Few were the remote corners where the news did not
penetrate and the unfortunates who missed the celebration long did
penance in listening to long-winded accounts of Sleepy Cat's memorable
day.

It dawned in a splendor of blue sky and golden sun, with the mountain
reaches, snow-swept and still, brought incredibly near and clear through
the sparkling air of the high plateau. The Sleepy Cat band were
Tenison's very first guests for breakfast.

"'N' you want to eat hearty, boys," declared Ben Simeral, who had reached
town the night before in order that no round crossing the Tenison bar
should escape him: "Harry expec's you to blow like hell all day."

Few men are more conscientious in the discharge of duty than the members
of a small-town brass band. The Sleepy Cat musicians held back only
until the arrival of the early local freight, Second Seventy-Seven, for
their bass horn player, the fireman. When the train pulled up toward the
station on a yard track, the band members in uniform on the platform
awaited their melodic back-stop, and the fireman, in greeting, pulled the
whistle cord for a blast. The switch engine promptly responded and one
whistle after another joined in until every engine in the yard was
blowing as Ben had declared Tenison expected the band itself to blow.

In this wholly impromptu and happy way the day was opened. The band,
laboriously trained for years by the local jeweler--said to be able to
blow a candle through an inch board with his South Bend B flat
cornet--now formed in marching order, the grimed fireman gamely in place
even after a night run, with his silver contrabass. At an energetic
signal from their leader they struck up a march and started down street
with the offering as a pledge of what they might be expected to do. They
were not called on, however, to do all, for at noon the Bear Dance Band
arrived from the West and an hour later came the crack thirty-two-piece
mi