with provender for the highway contractors on up under the cloud-combing parapet of the Garden Wall, and behind them heard for a while his frank and aboveboard reflections upon the immediate ancestries, the present deplorable traits, the darkened future prospects of his work stock. Soon they swung away from the rutted wagon track and took the steeper horseback trail and for hours threaded it like so many plodding ants against the slant of a tilted bowl. They stopped at midday on a little plateau fixed so high toward heaven that it was a picture-molding on Creation’s wall above a vast mural of painted buttes and playful cataracts and a straggling timber-line and two jeweled glaciers.

They stretched their legs and uncramped their backs; they ate and remounted and on through the afternoon single-filed along the farther slope where a family herd of mountain-goats browsed among the stones and paid practically no heed to them. They saw a solitary bighorn ram with a twisted double cornucopia springing out of his skull and likewise they saw a pair of indifferent mule-deer and enough landscapes to fill all the souvenir post-card racks of the world; for complete particulars consult the official guide-book of Our National Playgrounds.

Evening brought them across a bony hip of the Divide to within sight of the distant rear boundary of the governmental domain. So they pitched the tents and coupled up the collapsible stove there in a sheltered small cove in the Park’s back yard and watched the sun go down in his glory. When the moon rose it was too good to believe. You almost could reach up and jingle the tambourines of little circling stars; anyhow, you almost thought you could. It was a magic hour, an ideal place for lovemaking among the young of the species. Realizing the which, Mrs. Gating had a severe sinking and apprehensive sensation directly behind the harness buckle on the ample belt which girthed her weary form amidships. She’d been apprehensive all day but now the sinking was more pronounced.

She strained at the tethers of her patience though until supper was over and it was near hushabye-time for the tired forms of the middle-aged. Within the shelter of their small tent she spoke then to her husband, touching on the topic so steadfastly uppermost in her brain.

“Oh, Hector,” she quavered, “I’m actually beginning to be afraid you’re right. They’ve been together this livelong day. Neither one of them had eyes for anything or anybody else. The way he helped her on and off her horse! The way he fetched and carried for her! And the way she let him do it! And they’re—they’re together outside now. Oh, Hector!”

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