f she had put in
any cheese. The Major especially liked cheese and had not failed to
mention the fact when his hostess had let drop the information that a
whole one had come in with the last freight wagon from town. He removed
the cover and his smile of anticipation gave place to a look of
astonishment and incredulity. It was difficult to believe his eyes! Not
only was there no cheese, but that chicken wing and back which had been
left on the platter last night, and which he had been as sure of as
though he had put them in himself, were not in the box. He felt under
the paper as though hoping against hope that the box contained a false
bottom where the chicken might be concealed. There was no deception. He
saw all there was.

"Sinkers!" His voice expressed infinite disappointment and disgust. He
prodded one of the cold soda biscuits with his finger, took it out and
set the box on the ground beside him. He was hungry, therefore, insulted
as he felt, he had to eat, but he looked over his shoulder in the
direction from which he had come, and said aloud, "Them Scissor-bills'll
know it when I stop there again!" The declaration was in the nature of a
threat. While he munched the dry biscuit, which contained but a trace of
butter between the two halves, he gazed off at the vista of nothing in
particular that stretched out before him.

On his left the sand and sagebrush, cacti and sparse bunch-grass was
bounded by the horizon; behind him, in front of him, it was the same;
only on the right was the monotony broken by foothills and beyond, a
range of purple snow-covered peaks. From the slight elevation or "bench"
upon which he sat he looked down upon a greasewood flat where patches of
alkali gleamed dazzling white under the noon-day sun. The flat was
quarter-circled by a waterless creek upon whose banks grew a few
misshapen and splintered cottonwoods.

The countless millions of nearly invisible gnats that breed in alkali
bogs sighted the Major and promptly rose in swarms to settle upon his
ears and in the edges of his hair. He fanned them away automatically and
without audible comment. Perhaps they served as a counter-irritant; at
any rate, the sting of the indignity put upon him by what he termed a
"hobo lunch" was finally forgotten in more agreeable thoughts.

In the distance there was an interesting cloud of dust. Was it cattle,
loose horses, or some one coming that way? The Major's eyesight was not
all it had been and he