CHAPTER I


THE ARRIVAL OF VAL

In northern Montana there lies a great, lonely stretch of prairie land,
gashed deep where flows the Missouri. Indeed, there are many such--big,
impassive, impressive in their very loneliness, in summer given over to
the winds and the meadow larks and to the shadows fleeing always over the
hilltops. Wild range cattle feed there and grow sleek and fat for the fall
shipping of beef. At night the coyotes yap quaveringly and prowl abroad
after the long-eared jack rabbits, which bounce away at their hunger-driven
approach. In winter it is not good to be there; even the beasts shrink then
from the bleak, level reaches, and shun the still bleaker heights.

But men will live anywhere if by so doing there is money to be gained, and
so a town snuggled up against the northern rim of the bench land, where the
bleakness was softened a bit by the sheltering hills, and a willow-fringed
creek with wild rosebushes and chokecherries made a vivid green background
for the meager huddle of little, unpainted buildings.

To the passengers on the through trains which watered at the red tank near
the creek, the place looked crudely picturesque--interesting, so long as
one was not compelled to live there and could retain a perfectly impersonal
viewpoint. After five or ten minutes spent hi watching curiously the one
little street, with the long hitching poles planted firmly and frequently
down both sides--usually within a very few steps of a saloon door--and the
horses nodding and stamping at the flies, and the loitering figures