Bert Wilson in the Rockies | Page 2

drained it in great
draughts.
But just now even their effervescence was calmed somewhat by the
heat and spirit of drowsiness that hovered over the car.
"Gee," yawned the youngest of the three, stretching out lazily. "Isn't it
nearly twelve o'clock? I wonder when that dusky gentleman will come
along with the call to dinner."
"Always hungry," laughed one of the others. "The rest of us eat to live,
but Tom lives to eat."
"You've struck it there, Dick," assented the third. "You know they say

that no one has ever been able to eat a quail a day for thirty days hand
running, but I'd be willing to back Tom to do it."
"Well, I wouldn't quail at the prospect," began Tom complacently, and
then ducked as Dick made a pass at him.
"Even at that, I haven't got anything on you fellows," he went on, in an
aggrieved tone. "When you disciples of 'plain living and high thinking'
get at the dinner table, I notice that it soon becomes a case of high
living and plain thinking."
"Such low-brow insinuations deserve no answer," said Dick severely.
"Anyway," consulting his watch, "it's only half-past eleven, so you'll
have to curb the promptings of your grosser nature."
"No later than that?" groaned Tom. "I don't know when a morning has
seemed so long in passing."
"It is a little slow. I suppose it's this blistering heat and the long
distance between stations. It's about time something happened to break
the monotony."
"Don't raise false hopes, Bert," said Tom, cynically. "Nothing ever
happens nowadays."
"Oh, I don't know," laughed Bert. "How about the Mexican bandits and
the Chinese pirates? Something certainly happened when we ran up
against those rascals."
"They were lively scraps, all right," admitted Tom, "but we had to go
out of the country to get them. In the little old United States, we've got
too much civilization. Everything is cut and dried and pared and
polished, until there are no rough edges left. Think of the fellows that
made this trip across the continent sixty years ago in their prairie
schooners, getting cross-eyed from looking for buffalo with one eye
and Indians with the other, feeling their scalp every five minutes to
make sure they still had it. That was life."

"Or death," put in Dick skeptically.
"Then look at us," went on Tom, not deigning to notice the interruption,
"rolling along smoothly at fifty miles an hour in a car that's like a
palace, with its cushioned seats and electric lights and library and bath
and soft beds and rich food and servants to wait upon us. We're
pampered children of luxury, all right, but I'm willing to bet that those
'horny-handed sons of toil' had it on us when it came to the real joy of
living."
"Tom was born too late?" chaffed Bert. "He doesn't really belong in the
twentieth century. He ought to have lived in the time of Ivanhoe, or
Young Lochinvar, or the Three Musketeers, or Robin Hood. I can see
him bending a bow in Nottingham Forest or breaking a lance in a
tournament or storming a fortress by day, and at night twanging a
guitar beneath a castle window or writing a sonnet to his lady's
eyebrow."
"Well, anyhow," defended Tom, "those fellows of the olden time had
good red blood in their veins."
"Yes," assented Dick drily, "but it didn't stay there long. There were too
many sword points ready to let it out."
And yet, despite their good-natured "joshing" of Tom, they, quite as
much as he, were eager for excitement and adventure. In the fullest
sense they were "birds of a feather." In earlier and ruder days they
would have been soldiers of fortune, cutting their ways through
unknown forests, facing without flinching savage beasts and equally
savage men, looking ever for new worlds to conquer. Even in these
"piping days of peace" that they so much deplored, they had shown an
almost uncanny ability to get into scrapes of various kinds, from which
sometimes they had narrowly escaped with a whole skin. Again and
again their courage had been severely tried, and had stood the test. At
home and abroad, on land and sea, they had come face to face with
danger and death. But the fortune that "favors the brave" had not
deserted them, even in moments of deadliest peril. They were
accustomed to refer to themselves laughingly as "lucky," but those who

knew them best preferred to call them plucky. A stout heart and a quick
wit had "many a time and oft" extricated them from positions where
luck alone would have failed them.
And most of their adventures had been shared in company. The tie of
friendship that bound them together as closely as brothers was