"Brought my tooth-brush," said Lin, showing it in the breast-pocket of
his flannel shirt.

"Going to Denver?"

"Why, maybe."

"Take in San Francisco?"

"Sounds slick."

"Made any plans?"

"Gosh, no!"

"Don't want anything on your brain?"

"Nothin' except my hat, I guess," said Lin, and broke into cheerful song:

"'Twas a nasty baby anyhow,
And it only died to spite us;
'Twas afflicted with the cerebrow
Spinal meningitis!'"

They wound up out of the magic valley of Wind River, through the
bastioned gullies and the gnome-like mystery of dry water-courses, upward
and up to the level of the huge sage-brush plain above. Behind lay the
deep valley they had climbed from, mighty, expanding, its trees like
bushes, its cattle like pebbles, its opposite side towering also to the
edge of this upper plain. There it lay, another world. One step farther