quiet for our
country. But then, you're always on a horse and you're out in the air on
the plains with the mountains in sight. There's a lot of hard work about
it, too, and it's lonesome sometimes when your're ridin' the lines, but
I like it. When it gets a little too tame for me I hit the trail for the
mountains with an Indian. The Ogallalahs are my friends, and I'm going
to spend the winter with them and then go into the West Elk country. I'm
due to kill a grizzly this year and some mountain sheep." He was started
now, and Mary had only to listen. "Before I stop, I'm going to know all
there is to know of the Rocky Mountains. With ol' Kintuck and my
Winchester I'm goin' to hit the sunset trail and hit it hard. There's
nothing to keep me now," he said with a sudden glance at her. "It don't
matter where I turn up or pitch camp. I reckon I'd better not try to be
a cattle king." He smiled bitterly and pitilessly at the poor figure he
cut. "I reckon I'm a kind of a mounted hobo from this on."

"But your father and sister----"

"Oh, she isn't worryin' any about me; I haven't had a letter from her
for two years. All I've got now is Jack, and he'd be no earthly good on
the trail. He'd sure lose his glasses in a fight, and then he couldn't
tell a grizzly from a two-year-old cow. So you see, there's nothing to
hinder me from going anywhere. I'm footloose. I want to spend one summer
in the Flat Top country. Ute Jim tells me it's fine. Then I want to go
into the Wind River Mountains for elk. Old Talfeather, chief of the
Ogallalahs, has promised to take me into the Big Horn Range. After that
I'm going down into the southwest, down through the Uncompagre country.
Reynolds says they're the biggest yet, and I'm going to keep right down
into the Navajo reservation. I've got a bid from old Silver Arrow, and
then I'm going to Walpi and see the Mokis dance. They say they carry
live rattlesnakes in their mouths. I don't believe it: I'm going to see.
Then I swing 'round to the Grand Canon of the Colorado. They say that's
the sorriest gash in the ground that ever happened. Reynolds gave me a
letter to old Hance; he's the man that watches to see that no one
carries the hole away. Then I'm going to take a turn over the Mohave
desert into Southern California. I'm due at the Yosemite Valley about a
year from next fall. I'll come back over the divide by way of Salt
Lake."

He was on his feet, and his eyes were glowing. He seemed to have
forgo