they had didn't give 'em much ambition to be on the move much. They'd only looked for more disappointment. But as the train went on the two old fellers begin to set up straighter in their chairs back there on the observation car. They was surprised that only a half a day's ride or so from the coast was such open country as what they was seeing. Here they'd thought from all that'd been hinted in different ways that this whole desert would be growing cocoanuts and pineapple by now, that the whole of it would be blooming with flower gardens and happy homes. But it was just the same as it seemed like it ever was, and outside of the railroad track that went through the land, the time could of just as well been the 70's as the 20's. They passed Nevada and Utah, and even though the railroad went through some mighty prosperous looking valleys and towns, the old timers with a knowing eye at the hills on both side of the valleys and beyond, could see that progress hadn't covered near so much territory as they'd figgered. It had made considerable headway all right, but it was only in spots, and the territory that was around, bare of any signs of any man's work, was still all range land and awful big, so big that the spots where progress had touched seemed, in comparison, to be very small specks. There was many sights, as the train went on, that brought sunshine to the old men's hearts. They was sights that no other people on the long train ever noticed. Like for instance, twice they'd glimpsed the white rumps of antelopes. The other passengers never seen 'em and if they had they'd thought it was white rocks a shining to the sun against the far away hillside. They spotted bands of wild horses winding their way through the junipers and joshuas and going to water. All that was plain reading to the old timers, it told of many things, and it all spelled open country. able hasty with our opinions, Dan," says Old Frank during their last day on the train, "why this country still looks like home to me." "Well, you got to admit," answers Dan, "that things sure looked bad when we left, and anyway let's wait and see what's become of our range before we get our hopes up too high." "Yes, but look at this," went on Frank as he waved a hand at the big stretches of Wyoming rolling prairie all covered with good grass and with no interruptions of any kind for as far as the eye could see, "why you know how we figgered that this had all gone under the plow, or dudes, and dude ranches." The plow, sure enough had never been there; it was part of the millions and millions of acres of the range country of the West where the farmer never stopped,— and as for the dude ranches they was huddled up in the northwest corner of that State, and the space them places took was only another speck as compared with the big territory around that was still all cow country. Late that night the train pulled up by a station in a little Montana town, and there the two old timers, tired but happy, got out. They'd come to the end of their trip. They registered in the same old hotel that'd been their stopping place whenever they used to come to town to ship their cattle, and when they was showed to their room by a young feller who took their grips, they was pleased to see that it was their regular room whenever they came there. It hadn't changed, there was the bullet holes by the window which told some of the days of the rustler war. Both Dan and Frank knowed the characters that'd done the shooting, they'd been more than present at the doings. The next morning bright and early the two old timers was up and sashaying around town just to sort of see what'd happened to it. Quite a bit had happened to it of course, but there was no mistaking it was the same town. They noticed two new hotels, streets paved, hitching racks gone, livery stables turned into garages, and so on, but there was many an old landmark that stood up for itself "It seems to me like we been consider- amongst all the new things. By the time they reached the heart of Wyoming the old timers seemed to've shed ten good years of their life. They'd begin to do justice to all they paid for in the dining car, and the porters' and waiters' tips told some of the happy recklessness that'd took holt of 'em. Like the people, there was many that was strangers to 'em, but amongst 'em they could once in a while see the head of one they knowed well. Just the sight of them few meant a better welcome to the old timers than if the mayor and town-band had turned out to meet 'em. On their way back to the hotel they stopped at the bank, and there, after the howdedo was over, the old president of the bank near prayed at Dan and Frank to take some of the land which had been on his hands ever since the farmers left the country. Saying they'd consider doing that little thing later, the two headed for the depot with intentions of buying a ticket to the town where the old home ranch had been, and there they got the surprise of their life. They was told that that branch line wasn't running any more, that it hadn't been running for the past eight years, and what was more there was nothing left of the line but the grade, the tracks had been took off and the ties had been burned. Old Dan turned at Frank at the news, they stared at one another for a few seconds and then a big grin begin to spread on their features. "What do you know about that?" says Old Dan his eyes a sparkling. "And they even took off the tracks." They both got awful anxious to be at the place all at once; there was only one quick way for them to get there and they took it. In half an hour they'd got a hold of a car and a driver, loaded the car with a little flour, bacon, blankets, and a few other things, and away it started on its forty mile trip to the deserted town and the old home ranch. The road leading out of town was wide and gravelled, there was many automobiles on it, going both ways and like they was in an awful hurry to get there. On both sides of the road was farm after farm and house after house, none of 'em over a quarter of a mile apart. There was stores along that highway too, and gasoline stations, school houses, and high elevators for the farmers' grain. The whole country sure looked prosperous and was sure enough a farming country, and the hearts of the old timers begin to beat sort of unnatural as mile after mile didn't seem to bring no change. The wide highway led on like a straight ribbon flanked on both side with green fields of alfalfa and new grain. It looked like there'd never be no end to it, for as far as the old timers, whose eyes was a little dimmed by then, could see it went on and on. Then after what seemed an awful long ways the driver slowed down and turned to the left off the main highway, through more farms but not on as good a road. A high steel bridge was crossed and the old timers looked down at the wide river they'd knowed so well. Their cattle used to range near this far. "The river is pretty low for this time of the year," remarked the driver, "and if we don't get much rain this summer the farmers are liable to run short of water to irrigate with." So that was it, thought the old timers, these farms they'd passed was irrigated farms, and not the dry farms of the kind that'd tried to take over the range. It was a great relief for them to realize that and their hopes went up to the top once more. Straight acrost the irrigated valley went the car, through a little farming town and then it begin to go up a grade to the high benches where the irrigating waters couldn't reach. There was the dry farmers. Acrost the rolling land and for many miles around was shacks, each on a hundred and sixty acres or more and a setting up there on the landscape looking like something that'd just dropped from up above and landed there for no reason only for a place to land. Outside of the few shacks that was the closest to the little town that'd been just passed the others seemed most all deserted, doors and windows closed, and the atmosphere in the dark inside matched. well with the rusty broken handle plow on the outside. It all was like a monument which told of hopes that came to life and then went under. The car turned to the left a little and the road from then on was on the grade that'd been the railroad on which the train had hauled in more than it ever hauled out. It made a good road and all the driver had to watch out for was the spikes which had been left scattered when the track was pulled up; them spikes wasn't good for tires. The dry farmers' shacks kept a getting more and more scattered as mile after mile was covered; then came strips of open land which looked like they had been missed entirely by the soil tilling army, but, as the driver told 'em, them strips hadn't been missed, it was just that the shacks had been tore down when the farmer went away, and the fences had went too. Scattering over where oats and rye had once been planted was little bunches of cattle and horses, grazing on what was once again range land. One more ridge and then Old Dan would be able to see where the old home ranch had been; he pictured the town that would be there instead and he sit tight ready for whatever blow the sight might give. He was afraid to look, and it wasn't till he was sure the car was where he could get a good plain view of the land that he opened his eyes, he wanted to get it all at once. for very little more than a long lease would cost. He could get all he wanted and deeds for the whole, then he wouldn't have to contend with keeping the sheepman off of it and he wouldn't have to worry about straying herds of cattle or horses that'd take the feed away from his own stock. All that went through the old man's brain as the car went on and finally came to a stop in front of the old ranch house. Here he got out and somehow he didn't look so much like an old man no more. He stood a minute and sized the old place up, and then stepping on the porch he looked the direction where the town's main street had once been. All there was to show of that now was a couple of houses on either side, but he didn't see them, they'd soon be going down. The only inhabitant of the town was found when Old Dan followed by Frank walked into the old ranch house, he was a pack rat who'd made his nest of sticks and anything he could pack right in the "Where's the town?" asks Old Frank middle of the floor of the main room. to the driver. "That's what's left of it," says the driver pointing down the creek bottom, "most of the houses have been hauled away to the town we left this morning and for the farmers on the river." Old Dan's heart went up ten notches at the sight he was seeing and the words he was hearing. His mouth opened to speak but he couldn't say a word, he just looked and listened. Outside of the few scattering shacks and run down fences that was left to mar the land the old country still looked near the same. Even the old ranch house which he thought gone to make room for town houses was still there and looking like it was waiting for him. Part of his corrals was still up, and with the short time that old cowboy had to view his old range and home he already pictured how with a little hired help to pull away the fences and burn up the dilapidated shacks he could make it all come back to life as the country he'd once knowed. Yep! it would be even better than the country he once knowed; it would be his and not free government range for anybody to use. As his old friend at the bank told him the land could be bought Outside of that mess to clean up the old house wouldn't be needing much work done to it to make it as good as it ever was; it had sagged a little or maybe just settled, and it'd be good for many snows to come. The two old timers was near like youngsters again as they took in what could be seen in their ramblings. The old ranch house and the country around brought many memories back to life again, and there was remarks passed such as "Remember Dan, when a few of us stood off a party of Sioux warriors right over there by that cliff" or "Remember one of the hard winters Frank, when we couldn't see the high corrals for snow?" etc., etc. The two kept a talking of the times each spot or other reminded 'em of till away late in the afternoon, and Dan was just in the thick of another of them. old time happenings when he stopped short and listened to a sound like he wasn't believing his ears, it was a familiar sound but he hadn't heard it for many years. It was the thump of boot heels on the wide porch and the ringing of spur rowels. Old Dan jumped up and sticking his head around the corner of the house spotted a rider there; it was only a sec ond later when the old cowboy and that rider sort of clinched into a handshake and happy cuss words. . . . That rider was none other than his old cow foreman who regardless of Old Dan's advice to hit for the desert when the outfit "broke up" had stuck to the old home range. He'd been just riding by and spotting the car in front of the house had stopped to say "howdy" to whoever might be there. Folks had been kinda scarce the last few years. Old Dan found afterward that there'd been many other of his old riders what hadn't at all followed his advice in hitting for the dry country. "It all makes me feel like a quitter," Old Dan remarked that evening to Frank and the cow foreman as the three was setting on the porch. "Here I pulled up stakes and left just when the country needed help most. . . . It's been under an awful spell, boys, but it came out through, all scarred but sure enough through and still alive, now it's sleeping; the scars of the plow are healing and the dry weedy scabs are blowing away to the winds, the healthy skin of sod and buffalo grass is creeping up to make it all what it was, what it should of always been, and what it will always be, range land." Away off on the bench land the beller of a cow critter was heard, then a little while afterward that of a little calf answered. The skies turned from a sunset purple to a deep blue, and then darkness, . . . the range land was resting. The Mocking-Bird BY IRVING BACHELLER LORD of the odored alleys green! who on the silence flings A rippling joy and laughter as from god-touched, golden strings, Are you looking through the pearly gates?-The clock has struck eleven I think out there, In the moonlit air, You can hear the harps of heaven! Translating beauty into sound, you weave the glad day long Sun, moon, and star, and rainbow-gleams in a bridal robe of song. And you dye with the blood of roses, as you spin for the airy looms, From your teeming brain In the scent of the orange blooms. Deep down in a jasmine thicket, 'neath a tangle of gold and green, She lives with her growing little ones in a home no man has seen. I heard you there a-teaching school in a sly and secret way. Whispered and long, You told of the sunlit day. What tender love and heavenly joy were in the whispered notes! I think it made them stir their wings and ruffle up their throats. To Paradise Are beauty and the young. A View from a Hill BY LOUISE SAUNDERS Author of "The Knave of Hearts," "Other Joys," etc. ILLUSTRATIONS BY EDWARD SHENTON HE lived in the loveliest possible house, high up on a hill, so high that from her elaborate garden you could see the whole sweep of surrounding country. Even the largest and most expensive cars had to be put into second speed as they climbed the winding road, bordered by flowering hydrangeas, and swept round the gravelled drive to her door, and the smaller ones, though there were never many of those, arrived chugging with steaming radiators. And when you entered her airy hall, with its shining bare floors and its glassed doorways, you felt that she belonged there as no one else could. Though there was nothing airy about her. She was concentrated and firm, like a piece of sand-colored whip-cord. All the rightness of the place, its smooth austerity, its high-above-the-worldness, was centred in her. She was its emblem, and certainly she made me feel especially hot and dusty as she came slowly down the wide stairs in her cool linen dress to meet me. "How do you do, Emily?" she said in her clear, clipped voice, and waited. She had a manner of looking you solemnly in the eyes after she had made a remark that seemed only to mean: "Well, what have you to offer me in the way of response?" "Edith," I exclaimed, "it's so nice to be here!" It was the best I could do. "You must be tired after your journey. I'll show you to your room. Morgan will bring your things." Morgan appeared carrying my worn brown suitcase, obviously stuffed too full, and with a disgraceful bit of white tape sticking out one side of it. She paused and looked at it a moment, and I felt that it ought not to have been a suitcase at all, but a pigskin hat-box that kept its secrets; then she turned, and I followed her upstairs. "Oh, what a lovely room!" Pale-green furniture with impossible little pink flowers painted on it, a rugless floor here, too, and plain white curtains. I went to the window and looked down on miles and miles of hazy green country, cupped in an overlapping rim of pale, cloudlike hills. "I hope that you will find everything that you need," said Edith at the door. "This view is all I need after that hot, stuffy train. But I should like to see Franklyn. How old is he, six?" "Franklyn is seven years old," said Edith, and she smiled faintly for the first time. "He is having a tennis lesson now, but he will be back in an hour." "And Herbert, how is he?" I added, unnecessarily, for my cousin Herbert had never been known to have anything the matter with him. "Herbert is very well," she said precisely. "You will find us in the drawingroom when you come down." She looked me full in the eyes again. "He is bringing a Miss Kenworthy in to tea." A Miss Kenworthy! Why had she said it that way, as if there were dozens of Miss Kenworthys, all exactly alike, or as if to be a Miss Kenworthy was something vaguely not quite nice! When she had shut the door I struggled with my suitcase until it burst open, disclosing a hard mound of flattened clothes and my sponge-bag, whose string had been cruelly pinched by the cover and exposed to the gaze of a cold and unsympathetic world. I am very fond of that sponge-bag of blue denim lined with rubber. When I had hung it in my whitetiled bathroom, and put my brushes and comb on the dressing-table, and hung my things on hangers in the commodious closet, I felt very much at home. There |