I gripped his hand warmly, though I had intended to give him a dead-fish
sort of shake. After all, he was my dad, and there were just us two. I
picked up my suit-case and started for the gate. I looked back once, and
saw dad standing there gazing after me--and he did not look particularly
brisk. Perhaps, after all, dad cared more than he let on. It's a way the
Carletons have, I have heard.




CHAPTER II.

The White Divide.


If a phrenologist should undertake to "read" my head, he would undoubtedly
find my love of home--if that is what it is called--a sharply defined
welt. I know that I watched the lights of old Frisco slip behind me with
as virulent a case of the deeps as often comes to a man when his digestion
is good. It wasn't that I could not bear the thought of hardship; I've
taken hunting trips up into the mountains more times than I can remember,
and ate ungodly messes of my own invention, and waded waist-deep in snow
and slept under the stars, and enjoyed nearly every minute. So it wasn't
the hardships that I had every reason to expect that got me down. I think
it was the feeling that dad had turned me down; that I was in exile,
and--in his eyes, at least--disgraced, it was knowing that he thought me
pretty poor truck, without giving me a chance to be anything better.
I humped over the rail at the stern, and watched the waves slap at us
viciously, like an ill-tempered poodle, and felt for all the world like a
dog that's been kicked out into the rain. Maybe the medicine was good for