264 The White Goat 



I went to sleep, hearing the game of poker in the 

 adjoining room, the gobbling of Madden when 

 he lost, and the hoarse merriment of the other 

 men at his gibberish. 



" Sunday. . . . This morning the game was 

 still going on, but Madden had retired about 

 four o'clock a loser. The bar-tender, sweeping 

 the office, waked me, and I arose and made a 

 toilet, as usual, in the public trough." 



The retrospect fills me with merriment 

 and regret that it's all over for ever and ever; 

 and the goat does not live for whose sake I 

 would do it again. 



It is hard not to yield to further temptation, 

 not to transcribe from that diary of 1892 much 

 more about the appearance and customs of the 

 strange wild country through which I now passed 

 on my way to the goat. Some of the landscape 

 was the worst, the forlornest, the most worthless 

 that I know, far outstripping Nevada in sheer 

 meanness, and as desolate as Arizona, without 

 Arizona's magic splendor and fascination. Great 

 deserts without grandeur, great valleys without 

 charm, great rocks without dignity, mere lonely 

 ugliness everywhere ; that is the Big Bend coun- 

 try ; and the river Columbia itself, when you finally 



