t the cabin often nor long at a time. The evenings were
lonely sometimes.

But when camped at the edge of the timber on some mountain meadow, with
his ponies grazing in the starlit dusk, when the little, leaping flame
of his night fire flung ruddy shadows that danced in giant mimicry in
the cavernous arches of the pines; when the faint tinkle of the belled
pack-horse rang a faery cadence in the distance; then there was no such
thing as loneliness in his big, outdoor world. Rather, he was content in
a solid way. An inner glow of satisfaction because of work well done, a
sense of well-being, founded upon perfect physical health and ease,
kept him from feeling the need of companionship other than that of his
horses. Sometimes he sat late into the night watching the pine gum ooze
from a burning log and swell to golden bubbles that puffed into tiny
flames and vanished in smoky whisperings. At such times a companion
would not have been unwelcome, yet he was content to be alone.

Later, when Lorry heard that the writer was to bring his daughter into
the high country, he expressed himself to Shoop's stenographer briefly:
"Oh, hell!" Yet the expletive was not offensive, spoken gently and
merely emphasizing Lorry's attitude toward things feminine.

While Lorry was away with the pack-horses and a week's riding ahead of
him, the writer arrived in Jason, introduced himself and his
daughter,--a rather slender girl of perhaps sixteen or eighteen,--and
later, accompanied by the genial Bud, rode up to the Blue Mesa and
inspected the proposed camp-site. As they rode, Bud discoursed upon the
climate, ways of building a log cabin, wild turkeys, cattle, sheep,
grazing, fuel, and water, and concluded his discourse with a
dissertation upon dogs in general and Airedales in particular. The
writer was fond of dogs and knew something about Airedales. This
appealed to Shoop even more than had the writer's story of the West.

Arrived at the mesa, tentative lines were run and corners marked. The
next day two Mormon youths from Jason started out with a load of lumber
and hardware. The evening of the second day following they arrived at
the homestead, pitched a tent, and set to work. That night they unloaded
the lumber. Next morning they cleared a space for the cabin. By the end
of August the camp was finished. The Mormon boys, to whom freighting
over the rugged hills was more of a pastime than real work, brought in a
few pieces of furniture--iron