hand" for
scaring a newcomer.

Tresler was no weakling or he would never have set out to shape his
own course as he was now doing. He was a man of considerable purpose,
self-reliant and reasonable, with sufficient easy good-nature to be
compatible with strength. He liked his own experiences too, though he
never scorned the experiences of another. Slum had sized him up pretty
shrewdly when he said "he'll bob out on top like a cork in a water
bar'l," but he had not altogether done him full justice.

The southwestern trail headed slantwise for the mountains, which snowy
barrier bounded his vision to the west the whole of his journey. He
had watched the distant white-capped ramparts until their novelty had
worn off, and now he took their presence as a matter of course. His
eyes came back to the wide, almost limitless plains about him, and he
longed for the sight of a tree, a river, even a cultivated patch of
nodding wheat. But there was just nothing but the lank, tawny grass
for miles and miles, and the blazing sunlight that scorched him and
baked gray streaks of dusty sweat on his horse's shoulders and flanks.

He rode along dreaming, as no doubt hundreds of others have dreamt
before and since. There was nothing new or original about his dreams,
for he was not a man given to romance. He was too direct and practical
for that. No, his were just the thoughts of a young man who has left
his home, which thereby gains in beauty as distance lends enchantment
to it, and kindly recollection crowns it with a glory that it could
never in reality possess.

Without indication or warning, he came upon one of those strangely
hidden valleys in which the prairie near the Rockies abounds. He found
himself at the edge of it, gazing down upon a wide woodland-bound
river, which wound away to the east and west like the trail of some
prehistoric monster. The murmur of the flowing waters came to him with
such a suggestion of coolness and shade that, for the first time on
his long journey from Whitewater, he was made to forget the park-like
beauties of his own native land.

There was a delightful variation of color in the foliage down there.
Such a density of shadow, such a brilliancy. And a refreshing breeze
was rustling over the tree-tops, a breath he had longed for on the
plains but had never felt. The opposite side was lower. He stood on a
sort of giant step. A wall that divided the country beyond from the
country he was leaving. A wall