ying the
infrequent luxury of a day off. With the first gleam of morning they got
out their razors and shaved, and Siwash, who seemed to be the handy man
and chief counselor of the outfit, cut everybody's hair, with the
exception of Jim, who had just returned from somewhere on the train, and
still had the scent of the barber-shop on him, and Taterleg, who had
mastered the art of shingling himself, and kept his hand in by constant
practice.

Lambert mended his tire, using an old rubber boot that Taterleg found
kicking around camp to plug the big holes in his outer tube. He was for
going on then, but Siwash and the others pressed him to stay over the
day, to which invitation he yielded without great argument.

There was nothing ahead of him but desolation, said Taterleg, a country
so rough that it tried a horse to travel it. Ranchhouses were farther
apart as a man proceeded, and beyond that, mountains. It looked to
Taterleg as if he'd better give it up.

That was so, according to the opinion of Siwash. To his undoubted
knowledge, covering the history of twenty-four years, no agent ever had
penetrated that far before. Having broken this record on a bicycle,
Lambert ought to be satisfied. If he was bound to travel, said Siwash,
his advice would be to travel back.

It seemed to Lambert that the bottom was all out of his plans, indeed.
It would be far better to chuck the whole scheme overboard and go to
work as a cowboy if they would give him a job. That was nearer the
sphere of his intended future activities; that was getting down to the
root and foundation of a business which had a ladder in it whose rungs
were not made of any general agent's hot air.

After his hot and heady way of quick decisions and planning to
completion before he even had begun, Lambert was galloping the Bad Lands
as superintendent of somebody's ranch, having made the leap over all
the trifling years, with their trifling details of hardship, low wages,
loneliness, and isolation in a wink. From superintendent he galloped
swiftly on his fancy to a white ranchhouse by some calm riverside, his
herds around him, his big hat on his head, market quotations coming to
him by telegraph every day, packers appealing to him to ship five
trainloads at once to save their government contracts.

What is the good of an imagination if a man cannot ride it, and feel the
wind in his face as he flies over the world? Even though it is a liar
and a trickster, and a rif