The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lin McLean, by Owen Wister

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Title: Lin McLean

Author: Owen Wister

Posting Date: August 22, 2008 [EBook #1385]
Release Date: July, 1998

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIN MCLEAN ***

Produced by Bill Brewer

LIN McLEAN

By Owen Wister

DEDICATION

MY DEAR HARRY MERCER: When Lin McLean was only a hero in manuscript, he
received his first welcome and chastening beneath your patient roof. By
none so much as by you has he in private been helped and affectionately
disciplined, an now you must stand godfather to him upon this public
page.

Always yours,

OWEN WISTER

Philadelphia, 1897

HOW LIN McLEAN WENT EAST

In the old days, the happy days, when Wyoming was a Territory with a
future instead of a State with a past, and the unfenced cattle grazed
upon her ranges by prosperous thousands, young Lin McLean awaked early
one morning in cow camp, and lay staring out of his blankets upon the
world. He would be twenty-two this week. He was the youngest cow-puncher
in camp. But because he could break wild horses, he was earning more
dollars a month than any man there, except one. The cook was a more
indispensable person. None save the cook was up, so far, this morning.
Lin's brother punchers slept about him on the ground, some motionless,
some shifting their prone heads to burrow deeper from the increasing
day. The busy work of spring was over, that of the fall, or beef
round-up, not yet come. It was mid-July, a lull for these hard-riding
bachelors of the saddle, and many unspent dollars stood to Mr. McLean's
credit on the ranch books.

"What's the matter with some variety?" muttered the boy in his blankets.

The long range of the mountains lifted clear in the air. They slanted
from the purple folds and furrows of the pines that richly cloaked them,
upward into rock and grassy bareness until they broke remotely into
bright peaks, and filmed into the distant lavender of the north and the
south. On their western side the streams ran into Snake or into Green
River, and so at length met the Pacific. On this side, Wind River flowed
forth from them,