t as well. What the guide books call 'Wonders of
Nature.' Only wonder of nature I ever saw in Schoenstrom was my friend
Mac trying to think he was soused after a case of near-beer. Well----
See you tomorrow."

Not once had he smiled. His tone had been impersonal. He vaulted the
fence and tramped away.

When they drove out of town, in the morning, they found Milt waiting by
the road, and he followed them till noon. By urgent request, he shared a
lunch, and lectured upon going down long grades in first or second
speed, to save brakes; upon the use of the retarded spark and the
slipped clutch in climbing. His bug was beside the Gomez in the line-up
at the Park gate, when the United States Army came to seal one's
firearms, and to inquire on which mountain one intended to be killed by
defective brakes. He was just behind her all the climb up to Mammoth Hot
Springs.

When she paused for water to cool the boiling radiator, the bug panted
up, and with the first grin she had seen on his face since Dakota Milt
chuckled, "The Teal is a grand car for mountains. Aside from
overheating, bum lights, thin upholstery, faulty ignition, tissue-paper
brake-bands, and this-here special aviation engine, specially built for
a bumble-bee, it's what the catalogues call a powerful brute!"

Claire and her father stayed at the chain of hotels through the Park.
Milt was always near them, but not at the hotels. He patronized one of
the chains of permanent camps.

The Boltwoods invited him to dinner at one hotel, but he refused and----

* * * * *

Because he was afraid that Claire would find him intrusive, Milt was
grave in her presence. He couldn't respond either to her enthusiasm
about canyon and colored pool--or to her rage about the tourists who,
she alleged, preferred freak museum pieces to plain beauty; who never
admired a view unless it was labeled by a signpost and megaphoned by a
guide as something they ought to admire--and tell the Folks Back Home
about.

When she tried to express this social rage to Milt he merely answered
uneasily, "Yes, I guess there's something to that."

She was, he pondered, so darn particular. How could he ever figure out
what he ought to do? No thanks; much obliged, but guessed he'd better
not accept her invitation to dinner. Darn sorry couldn't come but----
Had promised a fellow down at the camp to have chow with him.

If in this Milt was veracious, he was rather fickle to