et and incessant as it balanced on a
rosin-weed, of the lark bunting and lark finch, poured forth
melodiously; twittering blue-birds looked into the air and back to
their perch atop the dead cottonwood as they gathered luckless insects;
the brown thrush, which sings the night through in the bright starlight,
rivaled the robin and grosbeak as Philip gazed over the blue-skyed,
green-grassed land. The blue-green of the ocean had not so fascinated as
the mysticism of this broad view. He was glad to be alive, and anxious
to be in the riot of life on the plains, where trappers, traders and
soldiers moved in the strenuous game of making a new world.

His abounding vitality had recouped itself after the strain of yesterday
and he forgot its unpleasantness in the glorious morning; yet at the
sight of Burroughs coming from his cabin, the sunlight dulled and
involuntarily he felt himself grow tense.

"I didn't mean a damn thing," began Burroughs awkwardly.

"That's all right," broke in Philip, as uncomfortable as the other.

Just then the doctor, with Joe and Charlie, came on the upper deck.

"What 'd I tell you, Charlie?" triumphantly asked the physician, as he
saw the trader and trooper shaking hands.

"What 'd you tell us?" repeated the man with the scarred face, in doubt,
as Burroughs moved away and Danvers turned toward the prow of the boat
staring, with eyes that saw not, into the western unknown.

"Didn't I tell you that Bob would do the right thing?" asked the
charitable surgeon impatiently, unconscious that he had voiced no such
sentiment.

The three looked at the river and at the long lances of light streaming
from the East, then at the English youth, abstracted, aloof.

"Perhaps yeh did," assented Joe, easily. "But I know one thing. It'll
stick in Bob's crop that he craw-fished----." A nod indicated his
meaning. "Somehow Danvers strikes me as a stuck-up Britisher."

"A man shouldn't be damned for his look or his manner," exploded the
doctor, although he recognized the truth of the criticism. "He's young
and self-conscious. A year or two in the Whoop Up Country will season
him and be the making of him."

"He'll not always stay in the Whoop Up Country," Charlie said,
presciently. "I wish I could do something for him," he added. "He'll
make his mark--somehow--somewhere."

"Prophesying, eh?" smiled the doctor. "All right; we'll see."

The light-draft, flat-bottomed _Far West_ made slow progress. The dead
and