aliforny; startin' from here as soon as my horse blows a spell
and eats his last feed at your feed box, mom. I've got to make it to
Meander to ketch the mornin' train."

"Oh, Banjo! you don't tell me!" Tears gushed to Mrs. Chadron's eyes,
used to so much weeping now, and her lips trembled as she pressed them
hard to keep back a sob. "You're the last friend of the old times, the
last face outside of this house belongin' to the old days. When you're
gone my last friend, the very last one I care about outside of my own,
'll be gone!"

Banjo cleared his throat unsteadily, and looked very hard at the fire
for quite a spell before he spoke.

"The best of friends must part," he said.

"Yes, they must part," she admitted, her handkerchief pressed to her
eyes, her voice muffled behind it.

"But they ain't no use of me stayin' around in this country and pinin'
for what's gone, and starvin' on the edge," said Banjo, briskly.
"Since you've sold out the cattle and the boys is all gone, scattered
ever-which-ways and to Texas, and the homesteaders is comin' into this
valley as thick as blackbirds, it ain't no place for me. I don't mix
with them kind of people, I never did. You've give it all up to 'em,
they tell me, but this homestead, mom?"

"All but the homestead," she sighed, her tears checked now, her eyes
on the farthest hill, where she had watched the crest many and many a
time for Saul to rise over it, riding home from Meander.

"You hadn't ort to let it go," said he, shaking his sad head.

"I couldn't'a'held it, the lawyers and Mr. Macdonald told me that.
It's public land, Banjo, it belongs to them folks, I reckon. But we
was here first!" A futile sigh, a regretful sigh, a sigh bitter with
old recollections.

"I reckon that's so, down to the bottom of it, but you folks made this
country what it was, and by rights it's yourn. Well, I stopped in to
say good-bye to the old brigamadier-colonel over at the post as I come
through. He tells me Alan and that little girl of hisn that stuck to
him and stood up for him through thick and thin 're goin' to be
married at Christmas time."

"Then they'll be leavin', too," she said.

"No, they're goin' to build on his ranch up the river and stay here,
and that old brigamadier-colonel he's goin' to take up land next to
'em, or has took it up, one of the two, and retire from the army when
they're married. He says this country's the breath of his body and he
couldn't live outside of