clearings.

And here were neither Asiatics nor Europeans. The scant population
consisted of the original settlers and their descendants. More than one
old man or woman Saxon talked with, who could remember the trip across
the Plains with the plodding oxen. West they had fared until the Pacific
itself had stopped them, and here they had made their clearings, built
their rude houses, and settled. In them Farthest West had been reached.
Old customs had changed little. There were no railways. No automobile
as yet had ventured their perilous roads. Eastward, between them and the
populous interior valleys, lay the wilderness of the Coast Range--a game
paradise, Billy heard; though he declared that the very road he traveled
was game paradise enough for him. Had he not halted the horses, turned
the reins over to Saxon, and shot an eight-pronged buck from the
wagon-seat?

South of Gold Beach, climbing a narrow road through the virgin forest,
they heard from far above the jingle of bells. A hundred yards farther
on Billy found a place wide enough to turn out. Here he waited, while
the merry bells, descending the mountain, rapidly came near. They heard
the grind of brakes, the soft thud of horses' hoofs, once a sharp cry of
the driver, and once a woman's laughter.

"Some driver, some driver," Billy muttered. "I take my hat off to 'm
whoever he is, hittin' a pace like that on a road like this.--Listen
to that! He's got powerful brakes.--Zocie! That WAS a chuck-hole! Some
springs, Saxon, some springs!"

Where the road zigzagged above, they glimpsed through the trees four
sorrel horses trotting swiftly, and the flying wheels of a small,
tan-painted trap.

At the bend of the road the leaders appeared again, swinging wide on
the curve, the wheelers flashed into view, and the light two-seated
rig; then the whole affair straightened out and thundered down upon them
across a narrow plank-bridge. In the front seat were a man and woman; in
the rear seat a Japanese was squeezed in among suit cases, rods, guns,
saddles, and a typewriter case, while above him and all about him,
fastened most intricately, sprouted a prodigious crop of deer- and
elk-horns.

"It's Mr. and Mrs. Hastings," Saxon cried.

"Whoa!" Hastings yelled, putting on the brake and gathering his horses
in to a stop alongside. Greetings flew back and forth, in which the
Japanese, whom they had last seen on the Roamer at Rio Vista, gave and
received his share.

"Diffe