te a brisk breeze,
he lighted a match and communicated the flame to the tobacco without
checking the speed of his animal. Then he glanced admiringly to the
right and left, at his companions.

"You're a couple of as fine-looking younkers as I've seed in a long
time; but you're almost as tall as me, and it seems to me you orter be
through with school."

"We expect to stay in school another year and then spend four in
college, after which several years will be needed to get ready for some
profession."

"Great Jiminy!" exclaimed the astonished ranchman; "you must be powerful
dumb, or else there's more to larn than I ever dreamed of."

"Well," said Jack, with a laugh at the simplicity of the fellow, "there
are plenty of boys a great deal smarter then we, but the smartest of
them can spend their whole lives in study and not learn a hundredth part
of what is to be learned."

Hank puffed his pipe slowly and looked seriously at the youth for a
minute without speaking. Then he said, as if partly speaking to himself:

"I s'pose that's so; a chap can go on larning forever, and then die
without knowing half of it. I never had much chance at eddycation, but
managed to pick up 'nough to read and write a letter and to do a little
figgering, but that's all."

"That is what you may call your book education; but how much more you
know of the rivers, the mountains, the climate, the soil, the game, the
Indians, and everything relating to the western half of our country! In
that respect we are but as babes compared with you."

"I s'pose that's so, too," replied the hunter, evidently impressed by
the fact that these youths were destined, if their lives were spared, to
become excellent scholars. He was so thoughtful that they did not
interrupt his meditations, and for a considerable while the three rode
in silence.

It need not be said that Jack and Fred kept their wits about them and
took note of everything in their field of vision. The season had been an
unusually favorable one for Wyoming, the rains having been all that was
required to make the grass succulent, nourishing and abundant. They
could have turned their ponies loose at any point, after leaving the
railway behind them, and the animals would have been able to crop their
fill. It was the same over hundreds of square miles, a fact which
readily explains why many portions of Wyoming rank as the best grazing
country in the world.

It was not yet noon when they rode down a