surplus amount of animal spirits, and I feel like doing something funny;
so I volunteer to cure his " sick foot" by sundry dark and mysterious
manoeuvres, that I unbiushingly intimate are "heap good medicine." With
owlish solemnity my small monkey-wrench is taken from the tool-bag and
waved around the " sick foot" a few times, and the operation is completed
by squirting a few drops from my oil-can through a hole in the blanket.
Before going I give him to understand that, in order to have the "good
medicine " operate to his advantage, he will have to soak his copper-colored
hide in a bath every morning for a week, flattering myself that, while
my mystic manoauvres will do him no harm, the latter prescription will
certainly do him good if he acts on it, which, however, is extremely
doubtful. Boiling into Reno at 10.30 A.M. the characteristic whiskey-
straight hospitality of the Far West at once asserts itself, and one
individual with sporting proclivities invites me to stop over a day or
two and assist him to "paint Reno red " at his expense. Leaving Reno,
my route leads through the famous Truckee meadows - a strip of very good
agricultural land, where plenty of money used to be made by raising
produce for the Virginia City market." But there's nothing in it any
more, since the Comstock's played out," glumly remarks a ranchman, at
whose place I get dinner. "I'll take less for my ranch now than I was
offered ten years ago," he continues.

The " meadows" gradually contract, and soon after dinner I find myself
again following the Truckee down a narrow space between mountains, whose
volcanic-looking rocks are destitute of all vegetation save stunted sage-
brush. All down here the road is ridable in patches; but many dismounts
have to be made, and the walking to be done aggregates at least one-third
of the whole distance travelled during the day. Sneakish coyotes prowl
about these mountains, from whence they pay neighborly visits to the
chicken-roosts of the ranchers in the Truckee meadows near by. Toward