206 The Grouse Family 



and we figured that he could stow the whole 

 of it. 



" If we only durst give him a slug of fire-water 

 — it might get to that powder and — "I moaned, 

 for my ribs were sore. Then we drove away. 



Let us turn the tube and see if the dust of the 

 past cannot rearrange itself into some form more 

 pleasing. Ah ! the magic of that kaleidoscope, 

 the memory. How the bright bits, the fragments 

 of the almost forgotten, gleam and glow, and how 

 marvellously the occasional dull bits fit into the 

 design and complete the beauteous whole. And 

 how we gray-headed boys love to play with this 

 toy ! Looking backward. Aye ! there's the rub. 

 Can any but an artist-sportsman, whose hands 

 bear no stain of needless slaughter, look back and 

 see these things ? I trust so, for in the clean 

 creed of our craft there are no such words as 

 " greed," or " monopoly." 



We were trailing — trailing westward. A few 

 miles south lay a new trail — of steel, and it 

 curved away over the open sun-baked antelope 

 ranges, past the black, poisoned, white-rimmed 

 waters, that were worse than mockery to thirsty 

 throats ; across the gray-backed billows where the 

 sage proclaimed the famished soil ; across this 

 continent's last battlefield, where labor's sweat- 

 ing ranks charged home and won league after 



