We drove away along the empty stage-road, with the mountains and the dying storm, in which a piece of setting sun would redly glow and vanish, making our leftward horizon, and to our right the great undulations of a world so large as to seem the universe itself. The air was wet still, and full of the wet sage-brush smell, and the ground was wet, but it could not be so long in this sandy region. Three hours would see us to the next house, unless we camped short of this upon Broke Axle Creek.
“Why Timberline?” I asked after several miles.
“Well, he came into this country the long, lanky, innocent kid like you saw him, and he’d always get too tall in the legs for his latest pair of pants. They’d be half up to his knees. So we called him that. Guess he’s most forgot his real name.”
“What is his real name?”
“I’ve quite forgot.”
This much talk did for us for two or three miles more.
“Must it be yellow?” Scipio asked then.
“Red’ll do it, too,” I answered. “Only you see green then, I think. And there are others.”
“H’m,” observed Scipio. “Most as queer as chemistry. D’ y’u know chemistry?”
“Why, what do you know?”