skirting the foot of the hills, till they reached the emigrant route,
for the railway had not been carried farther than Wabash, from which
point it ran south to Denver. It was a journey of some five hundred
miles to Fort Bridger, and they took a month to accomplish it, sometimes
following the ordinary line of travel, sometimes branching off more to
the north, where game was still abundant.

"That is Fort Bridger, Tom. It ain't much of a place to look at; but is,
like all these forts, just a strong palisading, with a clump of wooden
huts for the men in the middle. Well, the first stage of your journey is
over, and you know a little more now than when you left Denver; but
though I have taught you a good bit, you will want another year's
practice with that shooting-iron afore you're a downright good shot; but
you have come on well, and the way you brought down that stag on a run
yesterday was uncommon good. You have made the most of your
opportunities, and have got a steady hand and a good eye. You are all
right on your horse now, and can be trusted to keep your seat if you
have a pack of red-skins at your heels. You have learnt to make a camp,
and to sleep comfortable on the ground; you can frizzle a bit of
deer-flesh over the fire, and can bake bread as well as a good many. Six
months of it and you will be a good plain's-man. I wish we had had a
shot at buffalo. They are getting scarcer than they were, and do not
like crossing the trail. We ain't likely to see many of them west of the
Colorado; the ground gets too hilly for them, and there are too many bad
lands."

"What are bad lands, Jerry?"

"They are just lands where Nature, when she made them, had got plenty of
rock left, but mighty little soil or grass seed. There are bad lands all