scratch. It
all took time--and, as for patience, we'd been out of that commodity for
so long we hardly knew it by name.

The last straw fell on us just as we were loading up. I happened to look
down upon the ferry; and what do you suppose that old devil was doing? He
had torn up the back part of the plank floor of the ferry, and had laid it
along the sand for a bridge. He had made an incline from boat nose to the
bar, and had rough-locked his wagon and driven it down. Just as we looked,
he had come to the end of his bridge, and he and Pochette were taking up
the planks behind and extending the platform out in front.

Well! maybe you think Frosty and I stood there congratulating the old fox.
Frosty wanted me to kick him, I remember; and he said a lot of things that
sounded inspired to me, they hit my feelings off so straight. If we had
had the sense to do what old King was doing, we'd have been ten or
fifteen miles nearer home than we were.

But, anyway, we were up the bank ahead of him, and we loaded in the last
package and drove away from the painful scene at a lope. And you can
imagine how we didn't love old King any better, after that experience.

CHAPTER XII.

I Begin to Realize.

If I had hoped that I'd gotten over any foolishness by spending the fall
and winter away from White Divide--or the sight of it--I commenced right
away to find out my mistake. No sooner did the big ridge rise up from the
green horizon, than every scar, and wrinkle, and abrupt little peak fairly
shouted things about Beryl King.

She wasn't there; she was back in New York, and that blasted Terence
Weaver was back there, too, making all kinds of love to her according to
the letters of Edith. But I hadn't realized just how seriously I was
taking it, till I got within sight of the ridge that had sheltered her
abiding-place and had made all the trouble.

Like a fool I had kept telling myself that I was fair sick for the range;
for range-horses and range-living; for the wind that always blows over the
prairies, and for the cattle that feed on the hills and troop down the
long coulee bottoms to drink at their favorite watering-places. I thought
it was the boys I wanted to see, and to gallop out with them in the soft
sunrise, and lie down with them under a tent roof at night; that I wanted
to eat my meals sitting cross-legged in the grass, with my plate piled
with all the courses at once and my cup of coffee balanced precariously
s