geography is behind the times. New York has absorbed all of
Connecticut and part of Jersey."

"Well, it's all the same to us out here. Your whole country looks like
the small end of a slice of pie to us."

"Have you ever been in a city?"

"Oh yes, I go to Denver once in a while, and I saw St. Louis once; but I
was only a yearling, and don't remember much about it. What are you doing
out here, if it's a fair question?"

He looked away at the mountains. "I got rather used up last spring, and
my doctor said I'd better come out here for a while and build up. I'm
going up to Meeker's Mill. Do you know where that is?"

"I know every stove-pipe in this park," she answered. "Joe Meeker is kind
o' related to me--uncle by marriage. He lives about fifteen miles over
the hill from Bear Tooth."

This fact seemed to bring them still closer together. "I'm glad of that,"
he said, pointedly. "Perhaps I shall be permitted to see you now and
again? I'm going to be lonesome for a while, I'm afraid."

"Don't you believe it! Joe Meeker's boys will keep you interested," she
assured him.

The stage overtook them at this point, and Bill surlily remarked: "If
you'd been alone, young feller, I'd 'a' give you a chase." His resentment
of the outsider's growing favor with the girl was ludicrously evident.

As they rose into the higher levels the aspen shook its yellowish leaves
in the breeze, and the purple foot-hills gained in majesty. Great new
peaks came into view on the right, and the lofty cliffs of the Bear Tooth
range loomed in naked grandeur high above the blue-green of the pines
which clothed their sloping eastern sides.

At intervals the road passed small log ranches crouching low on the banks
of creeks; but aside from these--and the sparse animal life around
them--no sign of settlement could be seen. The valley lay as it had lain
for thousands of years, repeating its forests as the meadows of the lower
levels send forth their annual grasses. Norcross said to himself: "I have
circled the track of progress and have re-entered the border America,
where the stage-coach is still the one stirring thing beneath the sun."

At last the driver, with a note of exultation, called out: "Grab a root,
everybody, it's all the way down-hill and time to feed."

And so, as the dusk came over the mighty spread of the hills to the east,
and the peaks to the west darkened from violet to purple-black, the stage
rumbled and rattled and rushed down t