upon her ranges by prosperous thousands, young Lin McLean awaked early
one morning in cow camp, and lay staring out of his blankets upon the
world. He would be twenty-two this week. He was the youngest cow-puncher
in camp. But because he could break wild horses, he was earning more
dollars a month than any man there, except one. The cook was a more
indispensable person. None save the cook was up, so far, this morning.
Lin's brother punchers slept about him on the ground, some motionless,
some shifting their prone heads to burrow deeper from the increasing day.
The busy work of spring was over, that of the fall, or beef round-up, not
yet come. It was mid-July, a lull for these hard-riding bachelors of the
saddle, and many unspent dollars stood to Mr. McLean's credit on the
ranch books.

"What's the matter with some variety?" muttered the boy in his blankets.

The long range of the mountains lifted clear in the air. They slanted
from the purple folds and furrows of the pines that richly cloaked them,
upward into rock and grassy bareness until they broke remotely into
bright peaks, and filmed into the distant lavender of the north and the
south. On their western side the streams ran into Snake or into Green
River, and so at length met the Pacific. On this side, Wind River flowed
forth from them, descending out of the Lake of the Painted Meadows. A
mere trout-brook it was up there at the top of the divide, with easy
riffles and stepping-stones in many places; but down here, outside the
mountains, it was become a streaming avenue, a broadening course,
impetuous between its two tall green walls of cottonwood-trees. And so it
wound away like a vast green ribbon across the lilac-gray sage-brush and
the yellow, vanishing plains.

"Variety, you bet!" young Lin repeated, aloud.