It was August the third – and the rest of it. Being over Montana, and the Rockies, the skies were just as described by Truthful James. In the little park between the N. P. Station and the entrance to Yellowstone Park a stalwart young fellow and a fluffy, lacy, Paquined girl floated from place to place with their feet seven or eight inches from the earth – or so it seemed. They disappeared behind some shrubbery and sat down on a bench, where the young man hugged the girl ferociously, and she, with that patient endurance which is the wonder and glory of womanhood, suffered it uncomplainingly. In fact she reciprocated it.
Note that we said a moment ago that they disappeared. From whose gaze? Not from ours, for we saw them sit and – and what followed. Their disappearance was from the view of a slender man of medium height who was off toward the station, inspecting the salvias, the phloxes, the cannas, the colei, the materials with which the walks were paved, and the earth in the flower-beds. He looked the near things over with a magnifying-glass, and scrutinized the far landscape with field-glasses. When he removed his traveling cap, one saw that he was bald, though not so bald as he seemed – his weak and neutral hair blended so in color with the neutral shades of his face and garb.
As he looked at things near and far, from the formal garden of the little park to the towering peak of Electric Mountain, which flew a pennon of cloud off to the west, or Sepulcher Mountain, half lost in an unaccustomed haze to the south, but displaying above the blue its enormous similitude of a grave, with the stone at head and foot, he made notes in his huge pocket-book, and in making notes he approached closer and closer to the big boy and little girl on the bench. In fact, he stopped on the other side of the bush, and as the lovers kissed for the tenth time, at least, he stepped round toward them, peering into the top of the bushes, pencil poised to jot down the cause of the chirping sound which had greeted his ears.
"I think I heard young birds in this bush," said he.
"You did," responded the young man, blushing.
"This park is full of them," said the girl, rather less embarrassed.
"Did you note the species?" queried he of the glasses. "I seem quite unable to catch sight of them."
"They are turtle-doves," said the girl.
"Gulls!" said the man.
The girl giggled hysterically. The naturalist was protesting that gulls never nest in such places, and the young man was becoming hopelessly confused, when a fourth figure joined the group. He was clad in garments of the commonest sort – but the girl was at once struck by the fact that he wore a soft roll collar on his flannel shirt, and a huge red silk neckerchief. Moreover, he carried a long whip which he trailed after him in the grass.
"Local color at last!" she whispered to her lover. "I know we're going to have a shooting or a cow-boy adventure!"
"Well," the new-comer said, "do you go with us, or not, Doc?"
"Go with you?" asked the ornithologist. "Go where?"
"Tour of the Park?" replied the man with the whip. "I'm having hard work to get a load."
"I think," said the person addressed, "that I can finish my inspection of the Park on foot. It is, in fact, surprisingly small, and not at all what I had expected. I have been pacing it off. There are very few acres in it – "
"I'll be dog-goned," said the man with the whip, "if he don't think this is the Yellowstone Park! Stranger, look at yon beautiful arch, erected by Uncle Sam out of hexagonal blocks of basalt! That marks the entrance to the Wonderland of the World, a matchless nat'ral park of more'n three thousand square miles, filled with unnat'ral wonders of nature! This is the front yard of the railroad station. It'll take you days and days to do the Park – an' years to do it right."
"Oh, in that case," responded the investigator, "of course you may rely upon my joining you!"
"I want two more, lady," said the driver. "What say?"
"No," said the young man. "We've decided to cut the Park out."
"I've changed my mind, I believe," said the girl. "Let's go!"
"But I thought – "
And so the party was made up. It was like one of those strange meetings that take place on shipboard, on the wharves of ports – wherever fate takes men in her hands, shakes them like dice, and throws them on the board – and peeps at them to see what pairs, threes, flushes and other harmonies make up the strength of the cast.
There were seven of them. In the rear seat of the surrey sat two young men wearing broad-brimmed Stetsons, and corduroys. Their scarfs were pronouncedly Windsor, and the ends thereof streamed in the breeze as did the pennon of cloud from the top of Electric Peak off there in the west. The one with the long hair and the Dresden-china complexion starting to peel off at the lips, was the Minor Poet who eked out a living by the muck-raker's dreadful trade. He spoke of our malefactors of great wealth as "burglars" and grew soft-eyed and mute as the splendors of the Yellowstone Wonderland grew upon him. With him was a smaller man, shorter of hair, and younger in years – which youth was advertised by its disguise: a dark, silky Vandyke. He was an artist who was known to the readers of
