SEPAR'S VIGILANTE

We had fallen half asleep, my pony and I, as we went jogging and jogging through the long sunny afternoon. Our hills of yesterday were a pale-blue coast sunk almost away behind us, and ahead our goal lay shining, a little island of houses in this quiet mid-ocean of sage-brush. For two hours it had looked as clear and near as now, rising into sight across the huge dead calm and sinking while we travelled our undulating, imperceptible miles. The train had come and gone invisibly, except for its slow pillar of smoke I had watched move westward against Wyoming's stainless sky. Though I was still far off, the water-tank and other buildings stood out plain and complete to my eyes, like children's blocks arranged and forgotten on the floor. So I rode along, hypnotized by the sameness of the lazy, splendid plain, and almost unaware of the distant rider, till, suddenly, he was close and hailing me.

"They've caved!" he shouted.

"Who?" I cried, thus awakened.

"Ah, the fool company," said he, quieting his voice as he drew near."They've shed their haughtiness," he added, confidingly, as if I must know all about it.

"Where did they learn that wisdom?" I asked, not knowing in the least.

"Experience," he called over his shoulder (for already we had met and passed);"nothing like experience for sweating the fat off the brain."

He yelled me a brotherly good-bye, and I am sorry