sulkily, "Do yu' figure I care what sort of a lookin' girl is stuck on
yu' in Evanston?" And upon this young Lin laughed so loudly that his
friend told him he had never seen a man get so foolish in three years.

By-and-by they were in Utah, and, in the company of Ogden friends, forgot
prospecting. Later they resumed freight trains and journeyed north In
Idaho they said good-bye to the train hands in the caboose, and came to
Little Camas, and so among the mountains near Feather Creek. Here the
berries were of several sorts, and growing riper each day, and the bears
in the timber above knew this, and came down punctually with the season,
making variety in the otherwise even life of the prospectors. It was now
August, and Lin sat on a wet hill making mud-pies for sixty days. But the
philosopher's stone was not in the wash at that placer, nor did Lin
gather gold-dust sufficient to cover the nail of his thumb. Then they
heard of an excitement at Obo, Nevada, and, hurrying to Obo, they made
some more mud-pies.

Now and then, eating their fat bacon at noon, Honey would say, "Lin,
wher're yu' goin'?"

And Lin always replied, "East." This became a signal for drinks.

For beauty and promise, Nevada is a name among names. Nevada! Pronounce
the word aloud. Does it not evoke mountains and clear air, heights of
untrodden snow and valleys aromatic with the pine and musical with
falling waters? Nevada! But the name is all. Abomination of desolation
presides over nine-tenths of the place. The sun beats down as on a roof
of zinc, fierce and dull. Not a drop of water to a mile of sand. The mean
ash-dump landscape stretches on from nowhere to nowhere, a spot of mange.
No portion of the earth is more lacquered with paltry, unimportant