SCOTT BURTON ON THE RANGE

CHAPTER I

INTO A FAR COUNTRY

Scott Burton leaned eagerly forward and searched the scenery which rolled steadily past the Pullman window. The other occupants of the car, worn out with the long journey and surfeited with scenery, centered their attention on their books or tried to sleep away the weary miles. They had seen it all, or at least too much of it. But to Scott Burton it was a new country and to him a new country was of more absorbing interest than anything else.

Born in a little Massachusetts town, he had lived a stay at home life with the single exception of his trip to a college in the Middle West. But even then, before he had any idea that he would ever really have a chance to travel, it was always the tales of strange lands that fascinated him. He had been looking out of that car window for three solid days just as intently as he was looking now and there was not a bump on the landscape which failed to interest him. He had laid over one night in St. Louis that he might not miss anything by night travel, and another one in Pueblo. And still he stared at the country with almost unwinking eye.

A kindly old gentleman who had been watching him for some time, and whose curiosity was piqued by the boy’s unusual alertness, dropped into the seat beside him and opened a conversation.