delicately hinted in New York, and singularly enough, which had
strengthened on our way West, as we met ranchers, prospectors and
cowboys. But those few men I had fortunately met, who really knew
Jones, more than overbalanced the doubt and ridicule cast upon
him. I recalled a scarred old veteran of the plains, who had
talked to me in true Western bluntness:

"Say, young feller, I heerd yer couldn't git acrost the Canyon
fer the deep snow on the north rim. Wal, ye're lucky. Now, yer
hit the trail fer New York, an' keep goint! Don't ever tackle the
desert, 'specially with them Mormons. They've got water on the
brain, wusser 'n religion. It's two hundred an' fifty miles from
Flagstaff to Jones range, an' only two drinks on the trail. I
know this hyar Buffalo Jones. I knowed him way back in the
seventies, when he was doin' them ropin' stunts thet made him
famous as the preserver of the American bison. I know about that
crazy trip of his'n to the Barren Lands, after musk-ox. An' I
reckon I kin guess what he'll do over there in the Siwash. He'll
rope cougars--sure he will--an' watch 'em jump. Jones would rope
the devil, an' tie him down if the lasso didn't burn. Oh! he's
hell on ropin' things. An' he's wusser 'n hell on men, an'
hosses, an' dogs."

All that my well-meaning friend suggested made me, of course,
only the more eager to go with Jones. Where I had once been
interested in the old buffalo hunter, I was now fascinated. And
now I was with him in the desert and seeing him as he was, a
simple, quiet man, who fitted the mountains and the silences, and
the long reaches of distance.