trunks
Extinguished with a crash--and all was black.

Out in the wind-voiced darkness, swept by spasmodic deluges of rapid
flame and muffled thunder, it seemed I could hear the dream-forests of
the moody Master crackling and booming in the gloom.

--looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world.

"Say, how long is that piece?" asked the Kid.

And vipers crawled
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing--

We wondered if there might not be some rattlesnakes in that vicinity.

--They raked up
And, shivering, scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew brighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects--saw and shrieked and died--

"Cut that out!" said the Kid.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because," said the Kid.

But what are Bad Lands for? I had hoped to chant a bit of James Thomson,
the younger, also, there in that "dreadful night." I never was in a
place where it seemed to fit so well.

But we huddled up in our blanket under the dripping shelter, and that
was a long night. The soppy gray morning came at length. A midsummer
morning after a night of rain--and yet, no bird, no hopeful greenery, no
sense of the upward yearning Earth-Soul!

When we sighted the Missouri River again, the sun had broken through
upon the greengirt, glinting stream. It seemed like Paradise.

By almost continuous travel we reached Lismus Ferry on the second
morning from Hell Creek. The ferryman had a bit of information for us.
We would find nothing at the mouth of Milk River but a sandbar, he
advised us. But he had some ointment to apply to the wound thus
inflicted, in that Glasgow, a town on the Great Northern, was only
twenty-five miles inland. The weekly stage had left on the morning
before; but the ferryman understood that the trail was not overcrowded
with pedestrians.

It was a smarting ointment to apply to so fresh a wound; but we took the
medicine. Frank, Charley, and I set out at once for Glasgow, leaving the
others at camp to repair the leaking boat during our absence. The stage
trail led through an arid, undulating prairie of yellow buffalo grass.
There were creek beds, but they were filled with dust at this season of
the year. The Englishman set the pace with the stride of the
long-legged. The sun r