come into the mountains--foreigners
often--and I can never listen to their rhapsodies, or even read their
books about the Rockies, without a jealousy that they are talking
without leave of something that's mine. What can the Rockies mean to
them? Surely, if an American boy has a heritage it is the Rockies.
What can they feel of what I felt the first time I stood at sunset on
the plains and my very dreams loomed into the western sky? I toppled
on my pins just at seeing them."

She laughed softly. "You are fond of the mountains."

"I have little else," he repeated.

"Then they ought to be loyal to you. But the first impression--it
hardly remains, I suppose?"

"I am not sure. They don't grow any smaller; sometimes I think they
grow bigger."

"Then you _are_ fond of them. That's constancy, and constancy is a
capital test of a charm."

"But I'm never sure whether they are, as you say, loyal to me. We had
once on this division a remarkable man named Hailey--a bridge engineer,
and a very great one. He and I stood one night on a caisson at the
Spider Water--the first caisson he put into the river--do you remember
that big river you crossed on the plains----"

"Indeed! I am not likely to forget a night I spent at the Spider
Water; continue."

"Hailey put in the bridge there. 'This old stream ought to be thankful
to you, Hailey, for a piece of work like this,' I said to him. 'No,'
he answered, quite in earnest; 'the Spider doesn't like me. It will
get me some time.' So I think about these mountains. I like them, and
I don't like them. Sometimes I think as Hailey thought of the
Spider--and the Spider did get him."

"How serious you grow!" she exclaimed, lightly.

"The truce ends to-morrow."

"And the journey ends," she remarked, encouragingly.

"What, please, does that line mean that I see so often, 'Journeys end
in lovers meeting?'"

"I haven't an idea. But, oh, these mountains!" she exclaimed, stepping
in caution to the guard-rail. "Could anything be more awful than
this?" They were crawling antlike up a mountain spur that rose dizzily
on their right; on the left they overhung a bottomless pit. Their
engines churned, panted, and struggled up the curve, and as they talked
the dense smoke from the stacks sucked far down into the gap they were
skirting.

"The roadbed is chiselled out of the granite all along here. This is
the famed Mount Pilot on the left, and this the worst spot on the
divi