wide spaces, generally two large bucks on one small
pony, or a squaw and pappoose--a bundle of parti-colored rags. Presiding
over the whole rose the mountains to the west, serene, lifting into the
clearest light. Then once again came the now tiny music of the trumpet.

"When do yu' figure on comin' back?" inquired the driver.

"Oh, I'll just look around back there for a spell," said Lin. "About a
month, I guess."

He had seven hundred dollars. At Lander the horses are changed; and
during this operation Lin's friends gathered and said, where was any
sense in going to Boston when you could have a good time where you
were? But Lin remained sitting safe on the stage. Toward evening, at the
bottom of a little dry gulch some eight feet deep, the horses decided
it was a suitable place to stay. It was the bishop who persuaded them
to change their minds. He told the driver to give up beating, and
unharness. Then they were led up the bank, quivering, and a broken trace
was spliced with rope. Then the stage was forced on to the level ground,
the bishop proving a strong man, familiar with the gear of vehicles.
They crossed through the pass among the quaking asps and the pines,
and, reaching Pacific Springs, came down again into open country. That
afternoon the stage put its passengers down on the railroad platform
at Green River; this was the route in those days before the mid-winter
catastrophes of frozen passengers led to its abandonment. The bishop was
going west. His robes had passed him on the up stage during the night.
When the reverend gentleman heard this he was silent for a very short
moment, and then laughed vigorously in the baggage-room.

"I can understand how you swear sometimes," he said to Lin McLean; "but
I can't, you see. Not even at this."

The cow-puncher was checking his own trunk to Omaha.

"Good-bye and good luck to you," continued the bishop, giving his hand
to Lin. "And look here--don't you think you might leave that 'getting
full' out of your plans?"

Lin gave a slightly shamefaced grin. "I don't guess I can, sir," he
said. "I'm givin' yu' straight goods, yu' see," he added.

"That's right. But you look like a man who could stop when he'd had
enough. Try that. You're man enough--and come and see me whenever we're
in the same place."

He went to the hotel. There were several hours for Lin to wait. He
walked up and down the platform till the stars came out and the bright
lights of the town shone in