ing the menu until Pinkey came to a halt and said
with a dramatic gesture:

"There's your future home, Mr. Macpherson! That's what _I_ call a
reg'lar paradise."

As Mr. Macpherson stared at the Elysium indicated, endeavouring to
discover the resemblance, surprise kept him silent.

So far as he could see, it in nowise differed from the arid plain across
which they had ridden. It was a pebbly tract, covered with sagebrush and
cacti, which dropped abruptly to a creek-bed that had no water in it.
Filled with sudden misgivings, he asked feebly:

"What's it good for?"

"Look at the view!" said Pinkey, impatiently.

"I can't eat scenery."

"It'll be a great place for dry-farmin'."

Wallie looked at a crack big enough to swallow him and observed
humorously:

"I should judge so."

"You see," Pinkey explained, enthusiastically, "bein' clost to the
mountings, the snow lays late in the spring and all the moisture they is
you git it."

"I see." Wallie nodded comprehensively. "Why didn't you take it up
yourself, Pinkey?"

"Oh, I got to make a livin'."

There was food for thought in the answer and Wallie pondered it as he
got stiffly out of the saddle.

"Can I be of any assistance?" he asked, politely.

"You can git the squaw-axe and hack out a place fer a bed-ground and you
can hunt up some firewood and take a bucket out of the pack and go to
the crick and locate some water while I'm finding a place to picket
these horses."

Because it would hasten supper, it seemed to Wallie that wood and water
were of more importance than clearing a place to sleep, so he collected
a small pile of twigs and dead sagebrush, then took an aluminum kettle
from his camping utensils and walked along the bank of Skull Creek
looking for a pool which contained enough water to fill the kettle. He
finally saw one, and planting his heels in a dirt slide, shot like a
toboggan some twenty feet to the bottom. Filling his kettle he walked
back over the boulders looking for a more convenient place to get up
than the one he had descended.

He was abreast of the camp before he knew it.

"Whur you goin'?" Pinkey, who had returned, was hanging over the edge
watching him stumbling along with his kettle of water.

"I'm hunting a place to get up," said Wallie, tartly.

"How did you git down?"

"'Way back there."

"Why didn't you git up the same way?"

"Couldn't--without spilling the water."

"I'll git a rope and snake you."

"This doesn'