“‘Mr. Injuns! I have a proposition to make. I move that every Injun carry his own skillet.’
“The modesty and yet fairness of this proposition met with an enthusiastic reception and every Indian after that ‘carried his own skillet,’ which commendable example it would be well for all to follow.”
“That’s a good story!” I remarked. “A good moral story! This expedition, my dear Madame, was for fun, not for geographical pedantry; and my book shall make no pretense to be a cyclopædia, a guide, or a useful companion of any sort, but just a jolly story of a care-forgetting vacation. If it jogs the curiosity, whets the appetite, nerves the fingers, weak through long toil in tying, and untying purse strings, to come and see what we have seen, that is all the effect that can be expected; and this much done, the traveller who follows our uncertain trail will find out far more for himself than we ever could hope to tell him. Seeing Colorado, no matter how briefly,
‘Of her bright face, one glance will trace
A picture on the brain,
And of her voice in echoing hearts
A sound must long remain.’
“But here we are at Salt Lake, and home again, for one more gay dinner in the red-walled car; one more gay evening under the cool stars; one more night’s rest in the queer little stateroom. To-morrow, Chum, old ‘friend and fellow-student,’ in lonely grandeur you will be taking the long-to-be-remembered ‘special’ swiftly back to Denver; while the Madame and I are rolling away to the Golden Gate. Fill your glasses. And what shall the toast be? The God-wrought landscape we have seen? The wide-awake people we have known? The splendid railroad whose achievements we know and of whose hospitality we have partaken? The glorious ‘good times’ we’ve had? The stores of health we have laid away? Ay, all these and more. Let us toast each other; and then—
Good Night!”