ove of twelve swamp pines on my
place, and I am going to build my house there. I thought it would be
very romantic to live on the peaks amid the whispering pines, but I
reckon it would be powerfully uncomfortable also, and I guess my twelve
can whisper enough for me; and a dandy thing is, I have all the nice
snow-water I want; a small stream runs right through the center of my
land and I am quite near wood.

A neighbor and his daughter were going to Green River, the county-seat,
and said I might go along, so I did, as I could file there as well as
at the land office; and oh, that trip! I had more fun to the square
inch than Mark Twain or Samantha Allen _ever_ provoked. It took us a
whole week to go and come. We camped out, of course, for in the whole
sixty miles there was but one house, and going in that direction there
is not a tree to be seen, nothing but sage, sand, and sheep. About noon
the first day out we came near a sheep-wagon, and stalking along ahead
of us was a lanky fellow, a herder, going home for dinner. Suddenly it
seemed to me I should starve if I had to wait until we got where we had
planned to stop for dinner, so I called out to the man, "Little
Bo-Peep, have you anything to eat? If you have, we'd like to find it."
And he answered, "As soon as I am able it shall be on the table, if
you'll but trouble to get behind it." Shades of Shakespeare! Songs of
David, the Shepherd Poet! What do you think of us? Well, we got behind
it, and a more delicious "it" I never tasted. Such coffee! And out of
_such_ a pot! I promised Bo-Peep that I would send him a crook with
pink ribbons on it, but I suspect he thinks I am a crook without the
ribbons.

The sagebrush is so short in some places that it is not large enough to
make a fire, so we had to drive until quite late before we camped that
night. After driving all day over what seemed a level desert of sand,
we came about sundown to a beautiful canon, down which we had to drive
for a couple of miles before we could cross. In the canon the shadows
had already fallen, but when we looked up we could see the last shafts
of sunlight on the tops of the great bare buttes. Suddenly a great wolf
started from somewhere and galloped along the edge of the canon,
outlined black and clear by the setting sun. His curiosity overcame him
at last, so he sat down and waited to see what manner of beast we
were. I reckon he was disappointed for he howled most dismally. I
thought of Jack