in it, and beside it on a tall box a tin
wash-basin. Under the bed was a pile of pint flasks, some broken,
some whole, all empty. On the wood box lay a pair of shoes of almost
incredible dimensions. On the wall hung a saddle, a gun, and some
ragged clothing, conspicuous among which was a suit of dark cloth,
apparently new, with a paper collar carefully wrapped in a red silk
handkerchief and pinned to the sleeve. Over the door hung a wolf and
a badger skin, and on the door itself a brace of thirty or forty
snake skins whose noisy tails rattled ominously every time it
opened. The strangest things in the shanty were the wide
window-sills. At first glance they looked as though they had been
ruthlessly hacked and mutilated with a hatchet, but on closer
inspection all the notches and holes in the wood took form and
shape. There seemed to be a series of pictures. They were, in a
rough way, artistic, but the figures were heavy and labored, as
though they had been cut very slowly and with very awkward
instruments. There were men plowing with little horned imps sitting
on their shoulders and on their horses' heads. There were men
praying with a skull hanging over their heads and little demons
behind them mocking their attitudes. There were men fighting with
big serpents, and skeletons dancing together. All about these
pictures were blooming vines and foliage such as never grew in this
world, and coiled among the branches of the vines there was always
the scaly body of a serpent, and behind every flower there was a
serpent's head. It was a veritable Dance of Death by one who had
felt its sting. In the wood box lay some boards, and every inch of
them was cut up in the same manner. Sometimes the work was very rude
and careless, and looked as though the hand of the workman had
trembled. It would sometimes have been hard to distinguish the men
from their evil geniuses but for one fact, the men were always grave
and were either toiling or praying, while the devils were always
smiling and dancing. Several of these boards had been split for
kindling and it was evident that the artist did not value his work
highly.

It was the first day of winter on the Divide. Canute stumbled into
his shanty carrying a basket of cobs, and after filling the stove,
sat down on a stool and crouched his seven foot frame over the fire,
staring drearily out of the window at the wide gray sky. He knew by
heart every individual clump of bunch grass in the mil