he sale of everything
that had connected him with a rather dreary past. Out before him--

The train had left Limon Junction on its last, clattering, rushing leg
of the journey across the plains, tearing on through a barren country
of tumbleweed, of sagebrush, of prairie-dog villages and jagged arroyos
toward the great, crumpled hills in the distance,--hills which meant
everything to Robert Fairchild. Two weeks had created a metamorphosis
in what had been a plodding, matter-of-fact man with dreams which did
not extend beyond his ledgers and his gloomy home--but now a man
leaning his head against the window of a rushing train, staring ahead
toward the Rockies and the rainbow they held for him. Back to the
place where his father had gone with dreams aglow was the son traveling
now,--back into the rumpled mountains where the blue haze hung low and
protecting as though over mysteries and treasures which awaited one man
and one alone. Robert Fairchild momentarily had forgotten the
foreboding omens which, like murky shadows, had been cast in his path
by a beaten, will-broken father. He only knew that he was young, that
he was strong, that he was free from the drudgery which had sought to
claim him forever; he felt only the surge of excitement that can come
with new surroundings, new country, new life. Out there before him, as
the train rattled over culverts spanning the dry arroyos, or puffed
gingerly up the grades toward the higher levels of the plains, were the
hills, gray and brown in the foreground, blue as the blue sea farther
on, then fringing into the sun-pinked radiance of the snowy range,
forming the last barrier against a turquoise sky. It thrilled
Fairchild, it caused his heart to tug and pull,--nor could he tell
exactly why.

Still eighty miles away, the range was sharply outlined to Fairchild,
from the ragged hump of Pikes Peak far to the south, on up to where the
gradual lowering of the mighty upheaval slid away into Wyoming. Eighty
miles, yet they were clear with the clearness that only altitudinous
country can bring; alluring, fascinating, beckoning to him until his
being rebelled against the comparative slowness of the train, and the
minutes passed in a dragging, long-drawn-out sequence that was almost
an agony to Robert Fairchild.

Hours! The hills came closer. Still closer; then, when it seemed that
the train must plunge straight into them, they drew away again, as
though through some optical il