Two Casual Days 57 



From the Kerzenmacher dooryard, the sight of the Madison 

 range, completely closing in the western horizon from north to 

 south, is a sight of dignified splendor. Seen across a widespread 

 foreground of rolling prairie, golden tawny in the afternoon sun, 

 they present a long drawn rampart against the heaven of the 

 loveliest and most variedly luminous blues that the painter may 

 ever note, within which a deeper note shows either some forward- 

 advancing lesser height, on whose slopes the slanting sun may 

 strike a note of deep greenish gold on the crowns of the blue pines, 

 or some tremendous ravine whose depth is to be reckoned perhaps 

 in miles, yet at this distance betrayed by but a slight and airy 

 deepening of the blue harmony. At sundown the blues change 

 to a deep chord of violet that one can almost hear — that does in 

 truth, choir and chant in deep-toned harmony with the glowing 

 sky above. It is not an uncommon thing for a painter, speaking 

 of a successfully achieved color harmony, to say that it sings. 

 Here, if anywhere, is the sound suggestiveness of color made man- 

 ifest, by the hand of Nature herself. 



Among the relics of early days in Gallatin County noted at 

 Peters', was a pair of buffalo horns mounted on the frontal plate 

 of the original skull, twelve inches between the base of the 

 horns, twenty-one and one-half inches wide between the incurv- 

 ing tips, and each horn twelve inches in circumference at the 

 base. Peter kindly offered to give the artist the horns. 



Grayling post- 

 office serves a com- 

 munity of a dozen 

 scattered ranches ly- 

 ing in the Madison 

 basin, each a mile or 

 so from its neighbor, 

 and the farthest 

 perhaps half a dozen miles away from the postoffice. It takes 

 care also of mail of all kinds coming for prospectors, surveyors, 

 hunters, guides, construction engineers and camps, and such like 

 miscellaneous temporary sojourners and passersby within its field 

 of service. The mail service, regular enough in the summer and 

 fall — there is no spring — summer comes with a rush and a bang 

 — is sometimes interrupted for weeks at a time in the winter by 



