s youth by
according to the mother as good treatment as the daughter under the
same roof. Not a name was mentioned except Calamity's. I trust it is
obvious to you that it was not libelous, because it was without malice.
In fact, if you want to know the ear marks of a handy man's "story,"
look out for the smart gentlemen in veiled references without any facts
which can be transfixed by either a pin or a handspike. When you find
the innuendo without the handhold of fact, lick your lips if you are
keen on carrion; for I promise that you have come on a morsel.

Bat did even better than the clever story dictated straight to the typo
in the composing room. Always in the West, there flit in and out what
we Westerners used to call "floaters," gentlemen (and ladies) who come
in on a pullman car and go out on a pullman car and sometimes venture
as far away from safety as a hotel rotunda, then syndicate their
impressions of the West, in the East, and gravely correct twenty year
Westerners with twenty minute impressions. I don't believe on the
whole, as Westerners, we like them very much; but obviously, one
doesn't kill a mosquito with a hammer.

Bat caught such a floater on the delayed transcontinental express. He
was seeing the West through a car window. The East will not see the
jocularity of that fact. The West will, though it may smile with a
twist. Bat's floater was working for a Chicago boomster, who had
issued a magazine to boom Western real estate, suburban lots seven
miles from a flat car, which was all there was of the city. For
exactly fifteen dollars (when the floater's impressions came out, I
made exact inquiries as to what Bat had paid him; and it seemed to me
that floater sold himself very cheap) the travelling impressionist took
over Bat's story of "the Pretty Scandal in Peaceful Valley" and
rehashed it with the name MacDonald given as Macdonel, and syndicated
the scandal against the Forest Service throughout the East.

The transcontinental express had made up lost time and came roaring in
just as the stage rattled up to the platform. MacDonald and Williams
stepped off the observation car. Eleanor shook hands.

"You know about the sheep?" she asked.

"Yes, we have your letter," answered MacDonald. "That's why we stayed
so long buying grazing ground in the Upper Pass."

"Here, boy." He bought an evening paper; and helped Eleanor inside the
stage. Then he mounted to the top with Williams. Ther