on Mike." Then after a pause he added, a little wistfully: "I ain't got
many real friends, but I want to have them know I'm real, and I know the
real thing when I find it."

A conference was finally held and the management of the Club was turned
over to the chairman and his aides for a month. Jim and Belle were like
children on leave from boarding school. They packed in wild hilarity and
took the first train the schedule afforded for Cedar Mountain.

CHAPTER LX

The Gateway and the Mountain

August with its deadening heat was over; September, bright, sunny and
tonic, was come to revive the world. Rank foliage was shaking off the
summer dust, and a myriad noisy insects were strumming, chirping,
fiddling, buzzing, screeping in the dense undergrowth. It was evening
when they boarded the train for the West and took the trail that both
had taken before, but never with such a background of events or such an
eagerness for what was in the future. As the train roared through the
fertile fields of Illinois, with their cornfields, their blackbirds and
their myriads of cattle, red and white, the sun went down--a red beacon
blaze, a bonfire welcome on their pathway just before the engine--a
promise and a symbol.

It was near noon the next day when they reached the junction and took,
the branch line for the north. The first prairie-dog town had set Jim
ablaze with schoolboy eagerness; and when a coyote stood and gazed at
the train, he rushed out on to the platform to give him the hunter's
yell.

"My, how sleek he looked! I wonder how those prairie dogs feel as they
see him stalk around their town, like a policeman among the South
Chicago kids!"

When a flock of prairie chickens flew before the train he called, "Look,
look, Belle! See how they sail, just as they used to do!" As though the
familiar sights of ten months before were forty years in the past.

They were in the hills now, and the winding train went more slowly.
Animal life was scarcer here, but the pine trees and the sombre peaks
were all about. At five o'clock the train swung down the gorge with
Cedar Mountain before it, and Jim cried in joy: "There's our mountain;
there's our mountain!"

There was a crowd assembled at the station and as soon as Jim appeared a
familiar voice shouted, "Here he is!" and, led by Shives, they gave a
hearty cheer. All the world of Cedar Mountain seemed there. Pa Boyd and
Ma Boyd came first to claim their own. Dr. Jebb and Dr.