The Eaton "boys"—for there are three—left Pittsburg and went West many years ago. Howard was the first. He went in 1879. In 1884 Theodore Roosevelt went out to the same country. It was in 1904 when the Eatons left the Bad Lands and went toward the Big Horn Mountain. There, at the foot of Wolf Creek and in the center of the historic battle-ground of the Arapahoes, Sioux, Crows, and Cheyennes, they established a new ranch at Wolf, Wyoming.
II
"FALL IN"
The rendezvous for the Eaton party last summer was at Glacier Park Station on the Great Northern Railway. Getting to that point, remote as it seemed, had been surprisingly easy—almost disappointingly easy. Was this, then, going to the borderland of civilization, to the last stronghold of the old West? Over the flat country, with inquiring prairie dogs sitting up to inspect us, the train of heavy Pullman diners and club car moved steadily toward the purple drop-curtain of the mountains. West, always west.
Now and then we stopped, and passengers got on. They brought with them something new, rather electric. It was enthusiasm. The rest, who had been Eastern and greatly bored, roused and looked out of the windows. For the newcomers were telling fairy tales, with wheat for gold and farmers for princes, and backing everything with figures. They think in bushels over rather a large part of America to-day.
West. Still west. An occasional cowboy silhouetted against the sky; thin range cattle; impassive Indians watching the train go by; a sawmill, and not a tree in sight over a vast horizon! Red raspberries as large as strawberries served in the diner, and trout from the mountains that seemed no nearer by mid-day than at dawn!
Then, at last, at twilight, Glacier Park Station, and Howard Eaton on the platform, and old Chief Three Bears, of the Blackfeet, wonderfully dressed and preserved at ninety-three.
It was rather a picturesque party. Those who had gone up from the Eaton ranch in Wyoming—a trifle of seven hundred miles—wore their riding-clothes to save luggage. Khaki was the rule, the women mostly in breeches and long coats, with high-laced shoes reaching to the knee and soft felt hats, the men in riding-clothes, with sombreros and brilliant bandannas knotted about their throats. One or two had rather overdone the part and were the objects of good-natured chaffing later on by the guides and cowboys.
"Hi!" cried an urchin as we walked about the streets of Billings, Montana, to stretch train-tired muscles. "Here's the 101 Ranch!"