descending out of the Lake of the Painted Meadows. A
mere trout-brook it was up there at the top of the divide, with easy
riffles and stepping-stones in many places; but down here, outside
the mountains, it was become a streaming avenue, a broadening course,
impetuous between its two tall green walls of cottonwood-trees. And so
it wound away like a vast green ribbon across the lilac-gray sage-brush
and the yellow, vanishing plains.

"Variety, you bet!" young Lin repeated, aloud.

He unrolled himself from his bed, and brought from the garments that
made his pillow a few toilet articles. He got on his long boy legs and
limped blithely to the margin. In the mornings his slight lameness was
always more visible. The camp was at Bull Lake Crossing, where the
fork from Bull Lake joins Wind River. Here Lin found some convenient
shingle-stones, with dark, deepish water against them, where he plunged
his face and energetically washed, and came up with the short curly hair
shining upon his round head. After enough looks at himself in the dark
water, and having knotted a clean, jaunty handkerchief at his throat, he
returned with his slight limp to camp, where they were just sitting at
breakfast to the rear of the cook-shelf of the wagon.

"Bugged up to kill!" exclaimed one, perceiving Lin's careful dress.

"He sure has not shaved again?" another inquired, with concern.

"I ain't got my opera-glasses on," answered a third.

"He has spared that pansy-blossom mustache," said a fourth.

"My spring crop," remarked young Lin, rounding on this last one, "has
juicier prospects than that rat-eaten catastrophe of last year's hay
which wanders out of your face."

"Why, you'll soon be talking yourself into a regular man," said the
other.

But the camp laugh remained on the side of young Lin till breakfast was
ended, when the ranch foreman rode into camp.

Him Lin McLean at once addressed. "I was wantin' to speak to you," said
he.

The experienced foreman noticed the boy's holiday appearance. "I
understand you're tired of work," he remarked.

"Who told you?" asked the bewildered Lin.

The foreman touched the boy's pretty handkerchief. "Well, I have a way
of taking things in at a glance," said he. "That's why I'm foreman, I
expect. So you've had enough work?"

"My system's full of it," replied Lin, grinning. As the foreman stood
thinking, he added, "And I'd like my time."

Time, in the cattle idiom, meant back-pay up to date.