n to the Cliff
House--I had told Rankin to pitch it into the street, for I had
discovered Teddy Van Greve in one almost exactly like it, and--Hello!
Rankin had certainly overlooked a bet. I never caught him at it before,
that's certain. He had a way of coming to my left elbow, and, in a
particularly virtuous tone, calling my attention to the fact that I had
left several loose bills in my pockets. Rankin was that honest I often
told him he would land behind the bars as an embezzler some day. But
Rankin had done it this time, for fair; tucked away in a pocket of the
waistcoat was money--real, legal, lawful tender--m-o-n-e-y! I don't
suppose the time will ever come when it will look as good to me as it did
right then. I held those bank-notes--there were two of them, double
XX's--to my face and sniffed them like I'd never seen the like before and
never expected to again. And the funny part was that I forgot all about
wanting the gray trousers, and all about the faults of Rankin. My feet
were on bottom again, and my head on top. I marched down-stairs,
whistling, with my hands in my pockets and my chin in the air, and told
the landlord to serve dinner an hour earlier than usual, and to make it a
good one.

He looked at me with a curious mixture of wonder and amusement. "Dinner,"
he drawled calmly, "has been over for three hours; but I guess we can give
yuh some supper any time after five."

I suppose he looked upon me as the rankest kind of a tenderfoot. I
calculated the time of my torture till I might, without embarrassing
explanations, partake of a much-needed repast, and went to the door;
waiting was never my long suit, and I had thoughts of getting outside and
taking a look around. At the second step I changed my mind--there was that
deceptive mud to reckon with.

So from the doorway I surveyed all of Montana that lay between me and the
sky-line, and decided that my bets would remain on California. The sky was
a dull slate, tumbled into what looked like rain-clouds and depressing to
the eye. The land was a dull yellowish-brown, with a purple line of hills
off to the south, and with untidy snow-drifts crouching in the hollows.
That was all, so far as I could see, and if dulness and an unpeopled
wilderness make for the reformation of man, it struck me that I was in a
fair way to become a saint if I stayed here long. I had heard the
cattle-range called picturesque; I couldn't see the joke.

Frosty Miller sat opposite me