f it! After all, a
banquet is very much a state of mind.

When we pulled away, the ostracized New Yorker bade us farewell with a
snatch of a song once more or less popular: "Give my regards to
Broadway!"

We pushed on vigorously now. The head wind came up. _The head wind!_ It
seemed one of the eternal things. We paddled and cordelled valiantly,
discussing Milk River the while. We had grown very credulous on that
subject. Somehow or other an unlimited supply of gasoline was all the
engine needed for the complete restoration of its health; and Milk River
stood for gasoline in liberal quantities. Hope is generally represented
by the poets as a thing winged and ethereal; nevertheless it can be fed
on bacon.

The next morning we arrived at the mouth of what we took to be Hell
Creek, which flows (when it has any water in it!) out of the Bad Lands.
It didn't take much imagination to name that creek. The whole country
from which it debouches looks like Hell--"with the lights out," as
General Sully once remarked. A country of lifeless hills that had the
appearance of an endless succession of huge black cinder heaps from
prehistoric fires.

The wind had increased steadily all day, and now we saw ahead of us a
long rolling stretch of wind-lashed river that discouraged us somewhat.
A gray mist rolled with the wind, and dull clouds scudded over. We
pitched camp in a clump of cottonwoods and made flapjacks; after which
the Kid and I, taking our blankets and the rifle, set out to explore
Hell Creek.

[Illustration: REVEILLE!]

[Illustration: THE PEN AND KEY RANCH.]

The windings of the ravine soon hid us from the river, and we found
ourselves in a melancholy world, without life and without any human
significance. It was very easy to imagine one's self lost amid the drear
ashen craters of the moon. We pushed on up the creek, kicking up clouds
of alkali dust as we went. A creek of a burnt-out hell it was, to be
sure. It seemed almost blasphemous to call this arid gully a creek. Boys
swim in creeks, and fishes twinkle over the shallows where the sweet
eager waters make a merry sound. Creek, indeed! Did a cynic name this
dry ragged gash in the midst of a bleak black world where nothing lived,
where never laughter sounded?

A seething, fiery ooze might have flowed there once, but surely never
did water make music there.

We pushed on five or six miles, and the evening shade began to press in
about us. At last we issued forth i