"Have you always lived here--out West?"

"I've lived every day I've been here," he answered evasively. "Do I look
like a native?"

She laughed. "Oh, I don't know. We came here straight from New York, a
week ago, Elsa and I. Mr. Bostwick joined us two days later. I really
know nothing of the country at all."

"New York," he said, and relapsed into silent meditation. How far away
seemed old New Amsterdam! How long seemed the brief six years since he
had started forth with his youthful health, his strength, determination,
boyish dreams, and small inheritance to build up a fortune in the West!
What a mixture of sunshine and failure it had been! What glittering
hopes had lured him hither and yon in the mountains, where each great
gateway of adventure had charged its heavy toll!

He had lost practically all of his money; he had gained his all of
manhood. He had suffered privation and hardship; he had known the vast
comfort of friends--true friends, as certain as the very heart in his
breast to serve him to the end.

Like a panoramic dream he beheld a swift procession of mine-and-cattle
scenes troop past for swift review. He lived again whole months of
nights spent out alone beneath the sky, with the snow and the wind hurled
down upon him from a merciless firmament of bleakness. Once more he
stumbled blindly forward in the desert--he and Gettysburg--perishing for
water, giving up their liquid souls to the horribly naked and insatiate
sun. Again he toiled in the shaft of a mine till his back felt like a
crackly thing of glass with each aching fissure going deeper.