————
That, to all intents and purposes, ends my story. We did cross the mountains, and traverse the vast, silent slopes that fall away to the blue Pacific. Bolton had gilded the palm of the Hudson’s Bay Company in his search for me, and so they considerately dropped their feud with Barreau—at least there was no more shooting of dogs, nor any effort to recover the money that cost Montell his life. Or perhaps they judged it unwise to meddle with a party like ours.
So, by wide detour, we came at last to St. Louis. There Barreau and Jessie were married, and departed thence upon their honeymoon. When their train had pulled out, I went with Bolton back to his office in the bank. He seated himself in the very chair he had occupied the day I came and saddled the burden of my affairs upon him. He cocked his feet up on the desk, lighted a cigar and leaned back.
“Well, Robert,” he finally broke into my meditations, “how about this school question? Have you decided where you’re going to try for a B. A.? And when? What about it?”
“I can take up college any time,” I responded. “Just now—well, I’m going to the ranch. A season in the cow camps will teach me something; and I would like to run the business just as my father did. I don’t think I’ll slip back so that I can’t take up study again. Anyway, the schools have no monopoly of knowledge; there’s a wonderful lot of things, I’ve discovered, that a fellow has to teach himself.”
He surveyed me in silence a few minutes, his cigar pointed rakishly aloft, his eyes half shut. Then he took the weed between his thumb and forefinger and delivered himself of this sapient observation:
“You’ll do, Bob. As a matter of fact, the North made a man of you.”
I made no answer to that. I could not help reflecting, a trifle bitterly, that there were penalties attached to the attaining of manhood—in my case, at least.
THE END.
SPECIAL STANDARD 12MOS