informed us that in two hours we should 

 be eating dinner at the ranch house 

 in Jackson's Hole, where we expected 

 to stop for a while to recuperate from 

 the past year's hard grind and the past 

 two weeks of travel. This was good 

 news, as it was then five o'clock and 

 our midday meal had been light de- 

 spite the abundance of coffee, soggy 

 potatoes, salt pork, wafer slices of meat 

 swimming in grease, and evaporated 

 apricots wherein some nice red ants 

 were banqueting. 



" We'll just cross the Snake River, 

 and then it'll be plain sailing," he said. 

 Perhaps it was so. I was inexperi- 

 enced in the West. This was what fol- 

 lowed : 



Closing the door on the memory of 

 my recent perilous passage, I prepared 

 to be calm inwardly, as I like to think 



