and its mineral
possibilities. He asked about its mountains and streams, its possible
and impossible passes; but the "Literary Cuss" and I were drinking
deeply of weird stories that were being told quite incautiously by the
free trader, the old factor, and by the Missourian. We were like
children, this young author and I, sitting for the first time in a
theatre. The flickering camp fire that we had kindled in the open served
as a footlight, while the Gitch Lamp, still gleaming in the west,
glanced through the trees and lit up the faces of the three great actors
who were entertaining us without money and without price. The Missourian
was the star. He had been reared in the lap of luxury, had run away from
college where he had been installed by a rich uncle, his guardian, and
jumped down to South America. He had ridden with the Texas Rangers and
with President Diaz's Regulators, had served as a scout on the plains
and worked with the Mounted Police, but was now "retired."

All of which we learned not from him directly, but from the stories he
told and from his bosom friend, the free trader, whose guests we were,
and whose word, for the moment at least, we respected.

The camp fire burned down to a bed of coals, the Gitch Lamp went out. In
the west, now, there was only a glow of gold, but no man moved.

Smith the Pathfinder and our host the free trader bent over a map. "But
isn't this map correct?" Smith would ask, and when in doubt Jim would
call the Missourian. "No," said the latter, "you can't float down that
river because it flows the other way, and that range of mountains is two
hundred miles out."

Gradually we became aware that all this vast wilderness, to the world
unknown, was an open book to this quiet man who had followed the buffalo
from the Rio Grande to the Athabasca where he turned, made a last stand,
and then went down.

When the rest had retired the free trader and I sat talking of the Last
West, of the new trail my friends were blazing, and of the wonderfully
interesting individual whom we called the Missourian.

"He had a prospecting pard," said Jim, "whom he idolized. This man,
whose name was Ramsey, Jack Ramsey, went out in '97 between the Coast
Range and the Rockies, and now this sentimental old pioneer says he will
never leave the Peace River until he finds Ramsey's bones.

"You see," Cromwell continued, "friendship here and what goes for
friendship outside are vastly different. The matter of