ght, for these sons of the
sage-brush. But portable ready-made food plays of necessity a great part
in the opening of a new country. These picnic pots and cans were the
first of her trophies that Civilization dropped upon Wyoming's virgin
soil. The cow-boy is now gone to worlds invisible; the wind has blown
away the white ashes of his camp-fires; but the empty sardine box lies
rusting over the face of the Western earth.

So through my eyes half closed I watched the sale of these tins, and
grew familiar with the ham's inevitable trademark--that label with the
devil and his horns and hoofs and tail very pronounced, all colored a
sultry prodigious scarlet. And when each horseman had made his purchase,
he would trail his spurs over the floor, and presently the sound of his
horse's hoofs would be the last of him. Through my dozing attention came
various fragments of talk, and sometimes useful bits of knowledge. For
instance, I learned the true value of tomatoes in this country. One
fellow was buying two cans of them.

"Meadow Creek dry already?" commented the proprietor.

"Been dry ten days," the young cow-boy informed him. And it appeared
that along the road he was going, water would not be reached much before
sundown, because this Meadow Creek had ceased to run. His tomatoes were
for drink. And thus they have refreshed me many times since.

"No beer?" suggested the proprietor.

The boy made a shuddering face. "Don't say its name to me!" he
exclaimed. "I couldn't hold my breakfast down." He rang his silver money
upon the counter. "I've swore off for three months," he stated. "I'm
going to be as pure as the snow!" And away he went jingling out of the
door, to ride seventy-five miles. Three more months of hard, unsheltered
work, and he would ride into town again, with his adolescent blood
crying aloud for its own.

"I'm obliged," said a new voice, rousing me from a new doze. "She's
easier this morning, since the medicine." This was the engineer, whose
sick wife had brought a hush over Medicine Bow's rioting. "I'll give her
them flowers soon as she wakes," he added.

"Flowers?" repeated the proprietor.

"You didn't leave that bunch at our door?"

"Wish I'd thought to do it."

"She likes to see flowers," said the engineer. And he walked out slowly,
with his thanks unachieved. He returned at once with the Virginian; for
in the band of the Virginian's hat were two or three blossoms.

"It don't need mentioning," the S