"I'm growing fonder of my staff,
I'm growing dimmer in my eyes,
I'm growing fainter in my laugh,
I'm growing deeper in my sighs;
I'm growing careless in my dress,
I'm growing frugal with my gold,
I'm growing wise—I'm growing—yes,
I'm growing old."
Sincerely yours,
VAN.
The reply:
My Dear Old Pard:
Your note concerning the events of long ago out on the Laramie Plains and the Harney flats shoots across my vision events in the Cache de La Poudre (the Poodre), the Chugwater country, old Cheyenne, Sherman, Fort Laramie, Fetterman, Camp Carlin, both Plattes, the Medicine Bow waters and range, Allen's "Gold Room," McDaniel's hurdy-gurdy, the dust-stirring, dust-laden buffalo east of Chalk Bluffs, the deer and antelope of the whole Wyoming territory, the sage-hens, and I don't know what not.
It makes me stop and lope back into the sagebrush. It makes me climb the mountain sides and urge the bulls to fill their piñon yokes, tighten the chains, and hurry along the four or five tons of bacon or flour or shelled corn in gunny-sacks that Uncle Sam wants delivered somewhere over the range, across the desert sweeps, through cactus-grown, prickly pear sprinkled wastes, on through the dog-towns, in the heavy sand sifting through the spokes, and falling off in a spiral fount from the slow-turning hub.
Ah, yes, old pard, and as I whack my bulls in the train that runs without rails to the top of a long divide, I look for three things: water, smoke and Indians.
There were no railroads north of Cheyenne—nothing but the "bull-trains." There away on the edge of the horizon, over the yellow bunch grass, cured by the sun, is a strip of green. It is box-elder, and underbrush. Standing out here and there like grim sentinels on guard are the big, always dead and leafless cottonwoods, white as graveyard ghosts, day or night. It seems to be only a flat surface haul to this refreshing looking strip of green, and, as I have stopped the whole wagon-train by making this observation, and the wagon boss is moving my way on a big mule, I tap the off leader, who is thirty odd feet away, with my long lash and yell:
"Whoa, haw, Brownie," but not too loud at first; just an encouraging word or two, and then string 'em out. My leaders are light of feet and built like running horses. The pointers—or middle yokes—come in reluctantly, but I attend to that, and with the butt end of my stock, jab the near wheeler in the ribs, and away we go.