fringe of worshipers who packed the
huge inclosure. They had not time to indulge their cynicisms over this
swaying mass of emotional, half-thinking, and almost irresponsible
beings, nor to detect any similarity between THEIR extreme methods and
the scheme of redemption they themselves were seeking, for in a
few moments, apparently lifted to his feet on a wave of religious
exultation, the famous preacher arose. The men of Rattlesnake gasped for
breath.

It was Bulger!

But Briggs quickly recovered himself. "By what name," said he, turning
passionately towards his guide, "does this man--this impostor--call
himself here?"

"Baker."

"Baker?" echoed the Rattlesnake contingent.

"Baker?" repeated Lance Forester, with a ghastly smile.

"Yes," returned their guide. "You oughter know it too! For he sent his
wife and daughters over, after his usual style, to sample your camp, a
week ago! Come, now, what are you givin' us?"

IN THE TULES

He had never seen a steamboat in his life. Born and reared in one of the
Western Territories, far from a navigable river, he had only known the
"dugout" or canoe as a means of conveyance across the scant streams
whose fordable waters made even those scarcely a necessity. The long,
narrow, hooded wagon, drawn by swaying oxen, known familiarly as
a "prairie schooner," in which he journeyed across the plains to
California in '53, did not help his conception by that nautical figure.
And when at last he dropped upon the land of promise through one of the
Southern mountain passes he halted all unconsciously upon the low banks
of a great yellow river amidst a tangled brake of strange, reed-like
grasses that were unknown to him. The river, broadening as it debouched
through many channels into a lordly bay, seemed to him the ULTIMA THULE
of his journeyings. Unyoking his oxen on the edge of the luxuriant
meadows which blended with scarcely any line of demarcation into the
great stream itself, he found the prospect "good" according to his
lights and prairial experiences, and, converting his halted wagon into a
temporary cabin, he resolved to rest here and "settle."

There was little difficulty in so doing. The cultivated clearings he had
passed were few and far between; the land would be his by discovery
and occupation; his habits of loneliness and self-reliance made him
independent of neighbors. He took his first meal in his new solitude
under a spreading willow, but so near his natur