buggy following the new-made road ran on to
the two off-wheels mostly, till we dipped head-first into a ford,
climbed up a cliff, raced along a down, dipped again and pulled up
dishevelled at "Larry's" for lunch and an hour's rest. Only "Larry"
could have managed that school-feast tent on the lonely hillside. Need
I say that he was an Irishman? His supplies were at their lowest ebb,
but Larry enveloped us all in the golden glamour of his speech ere we
had descended, and the tent with the rude trestle-table became a palace,
the rough fare, delicacies of Delmonico, and we, the abashed recipients
of Larry's imperial bounty. It was only later that I discovered I had
paid eight shillings for tinned beef, biscuits, and beer, but on the
other hand Larry had said: "Will I go out an' kill a buffalo?" And I
felt that for me and for me alone would he have done it. Everybody else
felt that way. Good luck go with Larry!

"An' now you'll all go an' wash your pocket-handkerchiefs in that
beautiful hot spring round the corner," said he. "There's soap an' a
washboard ready, an' 'tis not every day that ye can get hot water for
nothing." He waved us large-handedly to the open downs while he put the
tent to rights. These was no sense of fatigue on the body or distance in
the air. Hill and dale rode on the eyeball. I could have clutched the
far-off snowy peaks by putting out my hand. Never was such maddening
air. Why we should have washed pocket-handkerchiefs Larry alone knows.
It appeared to be a sort of religious rite. In a little valley overhung
with gay painted rocks ran a stream of velvet brown and pink. It was
hot--hotter than the hand could bear--and it coloured the boulders in
its course.

There was the maiden from New Hampshire, the old lady from Chicago,
papa, mamma, the woman who chewed gum, and all the rest of them, gravely
bending over a washboard and soap. Mysterious virtues lay in that queer
stream. It turned the linen white as driven snow in five minutes, and
then we lay on the grass and laughed with sheer bliss of being alive.
This have I known once in Japan, once on the banks of the Columbia, what
time the salmon came in and "California" howled, and once again in the
Yellowstone by the light of the eyes of the maiden from New Hampshire.
Four little pools lay at my elbow: one was of black water (tepid), one
clear water (cold), one clear water (hot), one red water (boiling); my
newly washed handkerchief covered them all. W