E.

"Well, Bess, old girl, we're off now for the jolliest time out!" cried
Job as he vaulted into the saddle one June day, bound for the Yosemite
Valley, that wonderful spot of which Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote on the
old hotel register: "The only place I ever saw that came up to the
brag."

Job had left the Yellow Jacket forever. The years were beginning to
tell on the strong man of Pine Tree Mountain and Job was needed at
home. So he had come. Standing one night on Lookout Point, watching
the setting sun gild the far-off crown of El Capitan, he had resolved
that before its glow once more set on the monarch's brow, he would
mount Bess and be off to see again the sights on which old El Capitan
had looked down for innumerable centuries. Perhaps the knowledge that
Jane was there camping with her invalid father, who fancied that a
summer in the valley would make his life easier, had something to do
with the decision.

It was on one of those beautiful mornings in the California mountains
which come so often and yet are always a rare, glad surprise, that
Job, mounted on Bess, went singing down through the pasture gate, down
past the charred ruins of the mill, past the familiar entrance to
Dean's Lane, on toward the Frost Creek road and Wawona. It was a very
familiar road. He stopped so long to chat with Aunty Perkins, halted
Bess so long under the big live-oak at the Frost Creek school, and,
leaning on her neck, gazed wistfully at the scenes of many a boyhood
prank, that it was late in the afternoon when he passed the spot
fragrant with memories of "Aunt Eliza" and "Mary Jane," galloped down
the long hill, raced the coach and six just in from Raymond with a lot
of tourists up to the Wawona Hotel, sprang off Bess, turned her over
to a hostler and went into the office to register for the night.

That load of tourists furnished ample amusement for Job all that
summer evening. He had read of such people, but this was the first
time he had ever met them. There was the fat man, jovial and happy,
always cracking a joke, who shook the dust off what had been that
morning, before he began a ride of more than forty miles by stage, a
respectable coat, and laughed merrily till it nearly choked him. There
was the tall dude, with wilted high collar and monocle on his right
eye, drawling about this "Bloomin' dirty country, don'cher know."
Striding up and down the veranda with a regular tread that shook the
long porch, with clerical coa