e re-read it next day on his way to the post office twenty
miles away.

"DEAR MARY: Jack has just sent me a long letter and has told
me what you said. I hope you will forgive me. I thought you
didn't want to see me or write to me. I didn't know your
mother was sick. I thought you ought to have written to me,
but, of course, I understand now. I hope you will write in
answer to this and send your picture to me. You see I never
saw you in daylight and I'm afraid I'll forget how you look.

"Well, I'm out in the wild country, but it ain't what I
want. I don't like it here. The cowboys are all the time
rowin'. There ain't much game here neither. I kill an
antelope once in a while, or a deer down on the bottoms, but
I haven't seen a bear or a buffalo yet. I want to go to the
mountains now. This country is too tame for me. They say you
can see the Rockies from a place about one hundred miles from
here. Some day I'm going to ride over there and take a
look. I haven't seen any Indians yet. We are likely to have
shooting soon.

"If you write, address to Running Bear, Cheyenne County, and
I'll get it. I'll go down again in two weeks. Since Jack
wrote I want to see you awful bad, but of course it can't be
done, so write me a long letter.

"Yours respectfully,
"HAROLD EXCELL.

"Address your letter to Mose Harding, they don't know my real
name out here. I'll try to keep out of trouble."

He arrived in Running Bear just at dusk, and went straight to the post
office, which was in an ill-smelling grocery. Nothing more forlornly
disreputable than "the Beast" (as the cowboys called the town) existed
in the State. It was built on the low flat of the Big Sandy, and was
composed of log huts (beginning already to rot at the corners) and
unpainted shanties of pine, gray as granite, under wind and sun. There
were two "hotels," where for "two bits" one could secure a dish of
evil-smelling ham and eggs and some fried potatoes, and there were six
saloons, where one could secure equally evil-minded whisky at ten cents
a glass. A couple of rude groceries completed the necessary equipment
of a "cow-town."

There was no allurement to vice in such a place as this so far as Mose
was concerned, but a bunch of cowboys had just ridden in for "a good
time," and to reach t