'n I thought, 'f I could only get out
here they'd make me gov'nor's like 's not. 'N I do' know but what I'd
have looked to be made President of the United States 'f I'd sighted the
Pacific Ocean!"

Then the shaggy, keen-eyed mountaineer who made so light of boyish
expectations would knock the logs together and take a puff or two at his
pipe before coming to the climax of his remarks, which varied according
to the lesson he wished to inculcate.

"It took me several years of wrastling with life," he was fond of
saying, "to find out that it ain't so much matter _whar_ you be, as
_what_ you be. 'N if I was you, Waldy,"--here was the application,--"I'd
contrive to learn a little something on my own hook, before I aspired to
go consorting with them as knows it all!"

When, however, the time was ripe, and "Waldy," having fulfilled these
conditions, was fairly off for college, the ranchman had signified his
approval of his son's course by escorting him a few miles on his way.
The boy had felt himself highly honored by the attention, yet when the
time of parting came, it was with no such stricture about his throat as
had taken him at unawares in the early morning, that he watched the tall
form disappearing among the pine-trees. There was a certain
self-sufficiency about the "old man,"--aged forty-five,--that precluded
any embarrassing tenderness in one's relations with him.

Waldo was thinking of his father as he strode down the pass with that
welt on his cheek. He had an idea that his father would not make so much
of the affair as he was taking himself to task for not doing. And up to
this time his father had been his standard. He not only had a very high
opinion of him as he was, but he had a boyish faith in what he might
have been, a belief that if he had had half a chance he would have made
his mark in the world. He was glad that he bore his father's name, and
he was quite determined to make it stand for something in the minds of
men before he got through with it. It sounded like a name that was to be
made to mean something.

Suddenly the sound of wheels coming down the pass struck his ear. They
were the wheels of a buggy, he thought, and of a buggy drawn by a pair
of horses. The suggestion was distasteful to Waldo Kean just at that
moment, and he quickened his pace somewhat. Presently the wheels stopped
close behind him, a firm step sounded on the road, he felt a heavy hand
on his shoulder. He looked up, and his worst