And ninety-eight thousand other verses quite like it."




CHAPTER XII.

Plans for the Journey East


Until late in the afternoon they rode through a land that was bleak and
barren of all grace or cheer. The dull browns and greys of the
landscape were unrelieved by any green or freshness save close by the
banks of an occasional stream. The vivid blue of a cloudless sky served
only to light up its desolation to greater disadvantage. It was a grim
unsmiling land, hard to like.

"This may be God's own country," said Percival once, looking out over a
stretch of grey sage-brush to a mass of red sandstone jutting up, high,
sharp, and ragged, in the distance--"but it looks to me as if He got
tired of it Himself and gave up before it was half finished."

"A man has to work here a few years to love it," said Uncle Peter,
shortly.

As they left the car at Montana City in the early dusk, that thriving
metropolis had never seemed so unattractive to Percival; so rough, new,
garish, and wanting so many of the softening charms of the East.
Through the wide, unpaved streets, lined with their low wooden
buildings, they drove to the Bines mansion, a landmark in the oldest