hats, and sped down the slope after their
charges. When the noise of the troop had died there came a wonderful
silence on all the prairie--that silence, they say, which enters into
the heart of the old-time hunter and trapper and marks him off from the
rest of his race. The town disappeared in the darkness, and a very young
moon showed herself over a bald-headed, snow-flecked peak. Then the
Yellowstone, hidden by the water-willows, lifted up its voice and sang a
little song to the mountains, and an old horse that had crept up in the
dusk breathed inquiringly on the back of my neck. When I reached the
hotel I found all manner of preparation under way for the 4th of July,
and a drunken man with a Winchester rifle over his shoulder patrolling
the sidewalk. I do not think he wanted any one. He carried the gun as
other folk carry walking-sticks. None the less I avoided the direct line
of fire and listened to the blasphemies of miners and stockmen till far
into the night. In every bar-room lay a copy of the local paper, and
every copy impressed it upon the inhabitants of Livingstone that they
were the best, finest, bravest, richest, and most progressive town of
the most progressive nation under Heaven; even as the Tacoma and
Portland papers had belauded their readers. And yet, all my purblind
eyes could see was a grubby little hamlet full of men without clean
collars and perfectly unable to get through one sentence unadorned by
three oaths. They raise horses and minerals round and about Livingstone,
but they behave as though they raised cherubims with diamonds in their
wings.

From Livingstone the National Park train follows the Yellowstone River
through the gate of the mountains and over arid volcanic country. A
stranger in the cars saw me look at the ideal trout-stream below the
windows and murmured softly: "Lie off at Yankee Jim's if you want good
fishing." They halted the train at the head of a narrow valley, and I
leaped literally into the arms of Yankee Jim, sole owner of a log hut,
an indefinite amount of hay-ground, and constructor of twenty-seven
miles of wagon-road over which he held toll right. There was the
hut--the river fifty yards away, and the polished line of metals that
disappeared round a bluff. That was all. The railway added the finishing
touch to the already complete loneliness of the place. Yankee Jim was a
picturesque old man with a talent for yarns that Ananias might have
envied. It seemed to me, pres