ine with delight as he saw me coming with
the big bucket of cool drink. Leaving him a tub of water, I bade him
good-by once more and started him for Helena, five hundred miles
away.

At Missoula, the following evening, I rushed into the ticket office
and shouted, "Where is '54'?"

The clerk knew me and smilingly extended his hand.

"How de do? She has just pulled out. The horse is all OK. We gave him
fresh water and feed."

I thanked him and returned to my train.

Reaching Livingston in the early morning I was forced to wait nearly
all day for the train. This was no hardship, however, for it enabled
me to return once more to the plain. All the old familiar presences
were there. The splendid sweep of brown, smooth hills, the glory of
clear sky, the crisp exhilarating air, appealed to me with great
power after my long stay in the cold, green mountains of the north.

I walked out a few miles from the town over the grass brittle and
hot, from which the clapping grasshoppers rose in swarms, and
dropping down on the point of a mesa I relived again in drowse the
joys of other days. It was plain to me that goldseeking in the Rocky
Mountains was marvellously simple and easy compared to even the best
sections of the Northwest, and the long journey of the Forty-niners
was not only incredibly more splendid and dramatic, but had the
allurement of a land of eternal summer beyond the final great range.
The long trail I had just passed was not only grim and monotonous,
but led toward an ever increasing ferocity of cold and darkness to
the arctic circle and the silence of death.

When the train came crawling down the pink and purple slopes of the
hills at sunset that night, I was ready for my horse. Bridle in hand
I raced after the big car while it was being drawn up into the
freight yards. As I galloped I held excited controversy with the head
brakeman. I asked that the car be sent to the platform. He objected.
I insisted and the car was thrown in. I entered, and while Ladrone
whinnied glad welcome I knocked out some bars, bridled him, and said,
"Come, boy, now for a gambol." He followed me without the slightest
hesitation out on the platform and down the steep slope to the
ground. There I mounted him without waiting for saddle and away we
flew.

He was gay as a bird. His neck arched and his eyes and ears were
quick as squirrels. We galloped down to the Yellowstone River and
once more he thrust his dusty nozzle deep into the