."

"I've got some mail for yuh, Bud. And old Hank wanted me to ask yuh if
you'd like to go to Glasgow next Thursday and watch old Lauman start the
Wagner boys for wherever's hot enough. He can get yuh in, you being in
the writing business. He says to tell yuh it's a good chance to take
notes, so yuh can write a real stylish story, with lots uh murder and
sudden death in it. We don't hang folks out here very often, and yuh
might have to go back East after pointers, if yuh pass this up."

"Oh, go easy. It turns me sick when I think about it; how they looked
when they got their sentence, and all that. I certainly don't care to
see them hanged, though they do deserve it. Where are the letters?"
Thurston sprawled across the table for them. One was from Reeve-Howard;
he put it by. Another had a printed address in the corner--an address
that started his pulse a beat or two faster; for he had not yet reached
that blase stage where he could receive a personal letter from one of
the "Eight Leading" without the flicker of an eye-lash. He still gloated
over his successes, and was cast into the deeps by his failures.

He held the envelope to the light, shook it tentatively, like any woman,
guessed hastily and hopefully at the contents, and tore off an end
impatiently. From the great fireplace Gene watched him curiously and
half enviously. He wished he could get important-looking letters from
New York every few days. It must make a fellow feel that he amounted to
something.

"Gene, you remember that story I read to you one night--that yarn about
the fellow that lived alone in the hills, and how the wolves used to
come and sit on the ridge and howl o' nights--you know, the one you
said was 'out uh sight'? They took it, all right, and--here, what do you
think of that?" He tossed the letter over to Gene, who caught it just as
it was about to be swept into the flame with the draught in Thurston, in
the days which he spent one of the half-dozen Lazy Eight line-camps with
Gene, down by the river, had been writing of the West--writing in
fear and trembling, for now he knew how great was his subject and his
ignorance of it. In the long evenings, while the fire crackled and the
flames played a game they had invented, a game where they tried which
could leap highest up the great chimney; while the north wind whoo-ooed
around the eaves and fine, frozen snow meal swished against the one
little window; while shivering, drifting range cattle t