d by the door,
and I found the Virginian's eye on me. Finding who it was, he nodded
and motioned with his hand to go to sleep. And this I did with him in
my sight, still leaning in the open door, through which came the
interrupted moon and the swimming reaches of the Yellowstone.

XVI. THE GAME AND THE NATION--LAST ACT

It has happened to you, has it not, to wake in the morning and wonder
for a while where on earth you are? Thus I came half to life in the
caboose, hearing voices, but not the actual words at first.

But presently, "Hathaway!" said some one more clearly. "Portland 1291!"

This made no special stir in my intelligence, and I drowsed off again
to the pleasant rhythm of the wheels. The little shock of stopping next
brought me to, somewhat, with the voices still round me; and when we
were again in motion, I heard: "Rosebud! Portland 1279!" These figures
jarred me awake, and I said, "It was 1291 before," and sat up in my
blankets.

The greeting they vouchsafed and the sight of them clustering
expressionless in the caboose brought last evening's uncomfortable
memory back to me. Our next stop revealed how things were going to-day.

"Forsythe," one of them read on the station. "Portland 1266."

They were counting the lessening distance westward. This was the
undercurrent of war. It broke on me as I procured fresh water at
Forsythe and made some toilet in their stolid presence. We were drawing
nearer the Rawhide station--the point, I mean, where you left the
railway for the new mines. Now Rawhide station lay this side of
Billings. The broad path of desertion would open ready for their feet
when the narrow path to duty and Sunk Creek was still some fifty miles
more to wait. Here was Trampas's great strength; he need make no move
meanwhile, but lie low for the immediate temptation to front and waylay
them and win his battle over the deputy foreman. But the Virginian
seemed to find nothing save enjoyment in this sunny September morning,
and ate his breakfast at Forsythe serenely.

That meal done and that station gone, our caboose took up again its easy
trundle by the banks of the Yellowstone. The mutineers sat for a while
digesting in idleness.

"What's your scar?" inquired one at length inspecting casually the neck
of his neighbor.

"Foolishness," the other answered.

"Yourn?"

"Mine."

"Well, I don't know but I prefer to have myself to thank for a thing,"
said the first.

"I was displaying