“Here they are! We’ve been waiting for you folks!” came the cry, and Spouter rushed up to the Rovers, followed by Gif.
“Ho for the glorious West!” put in Gif. “Aren’t you fellows anxious to get there?” he questioned.
“Anxious doesn’t express it!” answered Andy. “Why, all night long I was riding broncos and lassoing wild cattle!” and he grinned.
Sleeping-car accommodations had been reserved for all of the crowd, and they were soon making themselves at home. Then, as the train sped westward, the Rovers told their chums about Bud Haddon.
“That certainly is interesting,” said Gif. “Just the same, I can’t think that Brassy Bangs is a thief. Why, if you’ll remember, he said he had been robbed himself!”
“He might have said that just to throw dust in the eyes of the public,” answered Spouter. “To my mind it will certainly be a good thing to keep our eyes open for this fellow Haddon.”
The trip to Montana took the best part of three days, and every one in the party enjoyed the journey thoroughly. They often went out to the observation end of the train, there to view the endless panorama of prairies and mountains, forests and streams, as they sped swiftly past. The magnificent view impressed Spouter as much as anybody.
“It’s sublime—stupendously sublime,” he murmured over and over again. “The thoughts that well up in my bosom at such a sight as this are beyond the power of words to express. When I view these immense plains, these mountain tops fading away in the distance, these wild and weird torrents rushing over the rocks, and these trackless forests with often not a human abode in sight, I cannot but think——”
“That there is room here for every man, woman and child in the city of New York and then some,” finished Andy. “Gee, how can they stick in one or two miserable cubby-holes of rooms when we have all this land to draw on!”
“That’s what gets me,” put in Gif. “But they do it. And I’m told that a whole lot of ’em would rather die huddled together than live out here where neighbors are miles apart.”