y with me? Huh?
How would that suit you? We can talk and smoke."

"Naw," Piney extended his hand and shook his head, as though to push the
hotel out of the range of possibilities for him, "I couldn't. Much
oblige'. But I cayn't sleep in haouses. Got to git back to the shack in
the woods. Wisht you'd go on over to Madeira's."

"No. I'll buck it out here alone," lamented Bruce. He hated to lose
Piney and take up the gloomy, rainy evening alone on this little, high,
remote place in the Missouri hills.

"See you again some day, then," Piney promised in final farewell. "I'm
up an' daown the Ridge rat frequent, I'll run 'crosst you."

"Well now, I should hope so," cried Bruce cordially. "Don't you ever
come to Canaan?"

"Nope. Hate a taown! But me an' Unc' Bernique will strike you sometime,
somewheres along the trail. S'long!"

"So long, Piney, so long!"

The boy turned his pony to the hills. The man on the porch came on out
to take charge of Bruce and Bruce's horse. Black night settled down.
Through the darkness cut the sound of the squawking geese, the tinkling
cow-bells, the grunting hogs. Lonely, lonely Missouri! Bruce went
inside, to sit in a little room upstairs, with his chin in his hand, his
eyes staring through the window, his thoughts roaming after Carington,
the office on Nassau Street, a girl who was a dainty fluff of lace and
silk. In his ears rang the sound of Carington's voice: "Why don't you
try Missouri,--Miss Gossamer sails,--Why don't you try Missouri,--Miss
Gossamer sails--" a faint, recedent measure, and intermingling with it
the sound of a boy's voice singing gaily on the misty hills:

"_A tater's good 'ith 'lasses._"

Steering leaned far out of the window, eager for the lad's music. It was
so sweet.

_Chapter Three_

THE PROMISED LAND

From the remotest beginning of things for the Southwest, Canaan had been
a "gre't taown." From the beginning she had been the county seat, and
from the beginning there had poured through her one long street, with
its two or three short tributaries, the whole volume of business of
Tigmore County; the strawberries, the chickens, the ginseng. Almost from
the beginning, too, she had had the newspaper and the hotel and some
talk about a bank. Canaanites held their heads high. So high that when
it began to be rumoured that the railroad was showing a disposition to
curve down toward Tigmore County, the Canaanites, unable to see past
their noses, appointed