see the water die down in a geyser-mouth get away as fast
as you can. I saw a tiny little geyser suck in its breath in this way,
and instinct made me retire while it hooted after me.

Leaving the Giantess to swear, and spit, and thresh about, we went over
to Old Faithful, who by reason of his faithfulness has benches close to
him whence you may comfortably watch. At the appointed hour we heard the
water flying up and down the mouth with the sob of waves in a cave. Then
came the preliminary gouts, then a roar and a rush, and that glittering
column of diamonds rose, quivered, stood still for a minute. Then it
broke, and the rest was a confused snarl of water not thirty feet high.
All the young ladies--not more than twenty--in the tourist band remarked
that it was "elegant," and betook themselves to writing their names in
the bottoms of shallow pools. Nature fixes the insult indelibly, and the
after-years will learn that "Hattie," "Sadie," "Mamie," "Sophie," and so
forth, have taken out their hair-pins, and scrawled on the face of Old
Faithful.

The congregation returned to the hotel to put down their impressions in
diaries and note-books which they wrote up ostentatiously in the
verandahs. It was a sweltering hot day, albeit we stood somewhat higher
than the summit of Jakko, and I left that raw pine-creaking caravanserai
for the cool shade of a clump of pines between whose trunks glimmered
tents. A batch of troopers came down the road, and flung themselves
across country into their rough lines. Verily the 'Melican cavalry-man
_can_ ride, though he keeps his accoutrements pig, and his horse
cow-fashion.

I was free of that camp in five minutes--free to play with the heavy
lumpy carbines, to have the saddles stripped, and punch the horses
knowingly in the ribs. One of the men had been in the fight with
"Wrap-up-his-Tail" before alluded to, and he told me how that great
chief, his horse's tail tied up in red calico, swaggered in front of
the United States cavalry, challenging all to single combat. But he was
slain, and a few of his tribe with him. "There's no use in an Indian,
anyway," concluded my friend.

A couple of cowboys--real cowboys, not the Buffalo Bill article--jingled
through the camp amid a shower of mild chaff. They were on their way to
Cook City, I fancy, and I know that they never washed. But they were
picturesque ruffians with long spurs, hooded stirrups, slouch hats, fur
weather-cloths over their knees,