"It's good we're not busy," said the foreman.

"Meanin' I'd quit all the same?" inquired Lin, rapidly, flushing.

"No--not meaning any offence. Catch up your horse. I want to make the
post before it gets hot."

The foreman had come down the river from the ranch at Meadow Creek,
and the post, his goal, was Fort Washakie. All this part of the country
formed the Shoshone Indian Reservation, where, by permission, pastured
the herds whose owner would pay Lin his time at Washakie. So the young
cow-puncher flung on his saddle and mounted.

"So-long!" he remarked to the camp, by way of farewell. He might
never be going to see any of them again; but the cow-punchers were not
demonstrative by habit.

"Going to stop long at Washakie?" asked one.

"Alma is not waiter-girl at the hotel now," another mentioned.

"If there's a new girl," said a third, "kiss her one for me, and tell
her I'm handsomer than you."

"I ain't a deceiver of women," said Lin.

"That's why you'll tell her," replied his friend.

"Say, Lin, why are you quittin' us so sudden, anyway?" asked the cook,
grieved to lose him.

"I'm after some variety," said the boy.

"If you pick up more than you can use, just can a little of it for me!"
shouted the cook at the departing McLean.

This was the last of camp by Bull Lake Crossing, and in the foreman's
company young Lin now took the road for his accumulated dollars.

"So you're leaving your bedding and stuff with the outfit?" said the
foreman.

"Brought my tooth-brush," said Lin, showing it in the breast-pocket of
his flannel shirt.

"Going to Denver?"

"Why, maybe."

"Take in San Francisco?"

"Sounds slick."

"Made any plans?"

"Gosh, no!"

"Don't want anything on your brain?"

"Nothin' except my hat, I guess," said Lin, and broke into cheerful
song:

"'Twas a nasty baby anyhow,
And it only died to spite us;
'Twas afflicted with the cerebrow
Spinal meningitis!'"

They wound up out of the magic valley of Wind River, through the
bastioned gullies and the gnome-like mystery of dry water-courses,
upward and up to the level of the huge sage-brush plain above. Behind
lay the deep valley they had climbed from, mighty, expanding, its trees
like bushes, its cattle like pebbles, its opposite side towering also
to the edge of this upper plain. There it lay, another world. One step
farther away from its rim, and the two edges of the plain had flowed
together over it lik