h the wide rich pasture lands where feeding herds of cattle
and bands of horses made up the wealth of the solitary rancher, whose
low-built wandering ranch house proclaimed at once his faith and his
courage. Away and ever away, the shining morning hours and the fleeting
miles racing with them, till by noon-day, all wet but still unweary, the
bronchos drew up at the Big River Stopping Place, forty miles from the
point of their departure.

Close behind the democrat rode Dr. Martin, the steady pace of his wise
old broncho making up upon the dashing but somewhat erratic gait of the
colts.

While the ladies passed into the primitive Stopping Place, the men
unhitched the ponies, stripped off their harness and proceeded to rub
them down from head to heel, wash out their mouths and remove from them
as far as they could by these attentions the travel marks of the last
six hours.

Big River could hardly be called even by the generous estimate of the
optimistic westerner a town. It consisted of a blacksmith's shop, with
which was combined the Post Office, a little school, which did for
church--the farthest outpost of civilization--and a manse, simple, neat
and tiny, but with a wondrous air of comfort about it, and very like the
little Nova Scotian woman inside, who made it a very vestibule of heaven
for many a cowboy and rancher in the district, and last, the Stopping
Place run by a man who had won the distinction of being well known to
the Mounted Police and who bore the suggestive name of Hell Gleeson,
which appeared, however, in the old English Registry as Hellmuth Raymond
Gleeson. The Mounted Police thought it worth while often to run in upon
Hell at unexpected times, and more than once they had found it necessary
to invite him to contribute to Her Majesty's revenue as compensation for
Hell's objectionable habit of having in possession and of retailing to
his friends bad whisky without attending to the little formality of a
permit.

The Stopping Place was a rambling shack, or rather a series of shacks,
loosely joined together, whose ramifications were found by Hell and his
friends to be useful in an emergency. The largest room in the building
was the bar, as it was called. Behind the counter, however, instead of
the array of bottles and glasses usually found in rooms bearing this
name, the shelf was filled with patent medicines, chiefly various
brands of pain-killer. Off the bar was the dining-room, and behind the
dining-