t maybe it was hard for her to have us that close in camp,
witnessin' her troubles every day, and she a foreigner. I reckon if she
got any comfort, it would be when we was off prospectin' or huntin', and
she could shut the cabin door and be alone."

The Virginian stopped for a moment.

"It will soon be a month since I left Galena Creek," he resumed. "But I
cannot get the business out o' my haid. I keep a studyin' over it."

His talk was done. He had unburdened his mind. Night lay deep and quiet
around us, with no sound far or near, save Buffalo Fork plashing over
its riffle.

II

We left Snake River. We went up Pacific Creek, and through Two Ocean
Pass, and down among the watery willow-bottoms and beaverdams of the
Upper Yellowstone. We fished; we enjoyed existence along the lake. Then
we went over Pelican Creek trail and came steeply down into the giant
country of grasstopped mountains. At dawn and dusk the elk had begun to
call across the stillness. And one morning in the Hoodoo country,
where we were looking for sheep, we came round a jut of the strange,
organ-pipe formation upon a longlegged boy of about nineteen, also
hunting.

"Still hyeh?" said the Virginian, without emotion.

"I guess so," returned the boy, equally matter-of-fact. "Yu' seem to be
around yourself," he added.

They might have been next-door neighbors, meeting in a town street for
the second time in the same day.

The Virginian made me known to Mr. Lin McLean, who gave me a brief nod.

"Any luck?" he inquired, but not of me.

"Oh," drawled the Virginian, "luck enough."

Knowing the ways of the country, I said no word. It was bootless to
interrupt their own methods of getting at what was really in both their
minds.

The boy fixed his wide-open hazel eyes upon me. "Fine weather," he
mentioned.

"Very fine," said I.

"I seen your horses a while ago," he said. "Camp far from here?" he
asked the Virginian.

"Not specially. Stay and eat with us. We've got elk meat."

"That's what I'm after for camp," said McLean. "All of us is out on a
hunt to-day--except him."

"How many are yu' now?"

"The whole six."

"Makin' money?"

"Oh, some days the gold washes out good in the pan, and others it's that
fine it'll float off without settlin'."

"So Hank ain't huntin' to-day?"

"Huntin'! We left him layin' out in that clump o'brush below their
cabin. Been drinkin' all night."

The Virginian broke off a piece of the Hoodoo mud-rock