When, some years later, the scouts were mustered out of service, Creede returned to his old home in Iowa. But he soon tired of the dull, prosy life they led there; and, remembering the scent of wild flowers and the balmy breeze that blew down the cool cañons of the Big Horn Mountains, he determined to return to the region of the Rockies. Already he had seen his share of service, it would seem. For more than a dozen years he had slept where night had found him, with no place he could call his home; and yet there are still a dozen years of doubt and danger through which he must pass. For him the trail that leads to fortune and fame, is a long one; and many camps must be made between his pallet on the plains and his mansion by the sea. The path of the prospector, like that of the poet, lies in a stony way, and nothing is truer than the declaration that:
The road is rough and rocky,—
The road that leads to fame;
The way is strewn with skeletons
Of those who have grown lame
And have fallen by the wayside.
The world will pass you by,
Nor pause to read your manuscript
Till you go off and die.