y. She smiled broadly
but winsomely, showing those charming beefsteak-polished teeth. They
shone like a beacon ahead of me, for it was now dark.

Suddenly we came upon a signboard. We went up to it, struck a match, and
read breathlessly--"GOODALE."

We looked about us. Goodale was a switch and a box car.

Nothing beside remains,

I quoted,

'round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Alas for the trim little lady with the white teeth and the smile and the
beefsteak!

We said bitter things there in that waste about the man with the
information. We loaded his memory with anathemas. One cannot eat a
signboard, even with so inviting a name upon it. An idea struck me--it
seemed a very brilliant one at the moment. I sat down and delivered
myself of it to my companions, who also had lusted after the flesh-pots.
"We have wronged that man with the information," said I. "He was no
ordinary individual; he was a prophet: he simply got his dates mixed. In
precisely one hundred years from now, there will be a town on this
spot--and a restaurant! Shall we wait?"

They cursed me bitterly. I suspect neither of them is a philosopher.
Thereat I proceeded to eat a thick juicy steak from the T-bone portion
of an unborn steer, served by the trim little lady of a hundred years
hence, there in that potential village of Goodale. And as I smoked my
cigarette, I felt very thankful for all the beautiful things that do not
exist.

And I slept that night in the great front bedroom, the ceiling of which
is of diamond and turquoise.

CHAPTER III

HALF-WAY TO THE MOON

At last the sinuous yellow road dropped over the bluff rim and, to all
appearances, dissolved into the sky--a gray-blue, genius-colored sky.

It was sundown, and this was the end of the trail for us. Beneath the
bluff rim lay Benton. We flung ourselves down in the bunch-grass that
whispered dryly in a cool wind fresh from the creeping night-shade. Now
that Benton lay beneath us, I was in no hurry to look upon it.

_Fort Benton?_ What a clarion cry that name had been to me! Old men--too
old for voyages--had talked about this place; a long time ago, 'way down
on the Kansas City docks, I had heard them. How far away it was then!
Reach after reach, bend after bend, grunting, snoring, toiling, sparring
over bars, bucking the currents, dodging the snags, went the snub-n