CHAPTER IX

THE OUTER TRAIL

A profound silence lay over Big Draw mining camp as Frontier Samson and
Tom Reynolds slipped quietly away among the hills. The sun had not yet
lifted itself above the horizon, but the speediness of its coming was
heralded in the eastern sky, and the tallest mountain peaks had already
caught the first shafts of its virgin glory. The valleys were still
robed in semi-darkness, and the two wayfarers seemed like mere spectres
as they sped forward.

"My, this is great!" Reynolds exclaimed as he at length stopped to
readjust his pack. "I believe I should live to be a hundred or over if
I could breathe air like this all the time. It's a fine tonic."

"It sure is," Samson agreed, as he laid aside his rifle and pulled out
his pipe. "Not much like the smell of yer city streets, whar ye
swaller hundreds of disease germs every second."

"Have you ever lived there?" Reynolds asked, curious to learn something
of the old man's history.

"Long enough to know what they're like. I've poked me nose into a good
many cities, an' they're all the same, to my way of thinkin'. It's a
wonder to me why so many people live in sich places, crowded, together