out his brown neck and shoulders.

'Don't forget that you and Rudolph are going hunting with me up on the
Niobrara next summer,' I said. 'Your father's agreed to let you off
after harvest.'

He smiled. 'I won't likely forget. I've never had such a nice thing
offered to me before. I don't know what makes you so nice to us boys,'
he added, blushing.

'Oh, yes, you do!' I said, gathering up my reins.

He made no answer to this, except to smile at me with unabashed pleasure
and affection as I drove away.

My day in Black Hawk was disappointing. Most of my old friends were
dead or had moved away. Strange children, who meant nothing to me, were
playing in the Harlings' big yard when I passed; the mountain ash had
been cut down, and only a sprouting stump was left of the tall Lombardy
poplar that used to guard the gate. I hurried on. The rest of the
morning I spent with Anton Jelinek, under a shady cottonwood tree in
the yard behind his saloon. While I was having my midday dinner at the
hotel, I met one of the old lawyers who was still in practice, and he
took me up to his office and talked over the Cutter case with me. After
that, I scarcely knew how to put in the time until the night express was
due.

I took a long walk north of the town, out into the pastures where the
land was so rough that it had never been ploughed up, and the long red
grass of early times still grew shaggy over the draws and hillocks. Out
there I felt at home again. Overhead the sky was that indescribable blue
of autumn; bright and shadowless, hard as enamel. To the south I could
see the dun-shaded river bluffs that used to look so big to me, and all
about stretched drying cornfields, of the pale-gold colour, I remembered
so well. Russian thistles were blowing across the uplands and piling
against the wire fences like barricades. Along the cattle-paths the
plumes of goldenrod were already fading into sun-warmed velvet, grey
with gold threads in it. I had escaped from the curious depression that
hangs over little towns, and my mind was full of pleasant things; trips
I meant to take with the Cuzak boys, in the Bad Lands and up on the
Stinking Water. There were enough Cuzaks to play with for a long while
yet. Even after the boys grew up, there would always be Cuzak himself! I
meant to tramp along a few miles of lighted streets with Cuzak.

As I wandered over those rough pastures, I had the good luck to stumble
upon a bit of the first road that went