ouded in green
greasewood and gray sage. For this important occasion Walker had engaged
the most notable stage-driver in that part of the country, whose turn it
was that day to lie over from the run between Comanche and Meander.

The party was to use his stage also, and carry lunch along, and make a
grand day of it along the river, trying for trout if conditions held
favorable. Smith was the name of the driver.

Smith was smiling like a baker as he drove up, for Smith could not
behold ladies without blushing and smiling. Smith had the reputation of
being a terror to holdup men. Also, the story was current in Comanche
that he had, in a bare-handed, single encounter with a bear, choked the
animal to death. There was some variance over the particulars as to the
breed of bear, its color, age, size, and weight. Some--and they were the
unromantic, such as habitually lived in Wyoming and kept saloons--held
that it was a black cub with a broken back; others that it was a
cinnamon bear with claws seven inches long; while the extremists would
be satisfied with nothing short of a grizzly which stood five feet four
at the shoulders and weighed eighteen hundred pounds!

But, no matter what romance had done for Smith, it could not overdo his
ancient, green vehicle, with the lettering,

BIG HORN VALLEY

along its side near the roof. It was a Concord stage, its body
swinging on creaking straps. It had many a wound of arrowhead in its
tough oak, and many a bullet-hole, all of which had been plugged with
putty and painted over long years ago for the assurance and comfort
of nervous passengers, to whom the evidence of conflict might have been
disturbing.

Now that there was no longer any reason for concealment, the owners had
allowed the paint to crumble and the putty to fall away, baring the
veteran's scars. These were so thick that it seemed a marvel that
anybody who took passage in it in those perilous days escaped. In a
sun-cracked and time-curled leather holster tacked to the seat at
Smith's right hand, a large revolver with a prodigious black handle hung
ready for the disciplining of bandits or bears, as they might come
across Smith's way.

Smith rounded up before the tent with a curve like a skater, bringing
his four horses to a stop in fine style. No matter how Smith's parts
might be exaggerated by rumor or humor in other ways, as a teamster he
stood without a peer between Cody and Green River.