settled."
"Bar Harbour, Trouville, Paris, or Berlin?"
"None of them. I'm going West."
"Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, San Diego, or Monterey?"
"None of them. I'm going to the real West. I'm going to a mining
camp."
The Leslies straightened their backbones.
"Don't spring things on us that way," reproved Bertie severely; "you'll
give us heart disease. Now repeat softly."
"I am going to a mining camp," obeyed Bennington, a little
shamefacedly.
"With whom?"
"Alone."
This time the Leslies sprang quite to their feet.
"By the Great Horn Spoon, man!" cried Jim. "Alone! No chaperon!
Good Lord!"
"Yes," said Bennington, "I've always wanted to go West. I want to
write, and I'm sure, in that great, free country, I'll get a chance for
development. I had to work hard to induce father and mother to consent,
but it's done now, and I leave next week. Father procured me a position
out there in one of the camps. I'm to be local treasurer, or something
like that; I'm not quite sure, you see, for I haven't talked with Bishop
yet. I go to his office for directions to-morrow."
At the mention of Bishop the Leslies glanced at each other behind the
young man's back.
"Bishop?" repeated Jim. "Where's your job located?"
"In the Black Hills of South Dakota, somewhere near a little place
called Spanish Gulch."
This time the Leslies winked at each other.
"It's a nice country," commented Bert vaguely; "I've been there."
"Oh, have you?" cried the young man. "What's it like?"
"Hills, pines, log houses, good hunting--oh, it's Western enough."
A clock struck in a church tower outside. In spite of himself,
Bennington started.
"Better run along home," laughed Jim; "your mamma will be angry."
To prove that this consideration carried no weight, Bennington stayed
ten minutes longer. Then he descended the five flights of stairs
deliberately enough, but once out of earshot of his friends, he ran
several blocks. Before going into the house he took off his shoes. In
spite of the precaution, his mother called to him as he passed her room.
It was half past ten.
Beck and Hench kicked de Laney's chair aside, and drew up more
comfortably before the fire; but James would have none of it. He
seemed to be excited.
"No," he vetoed decidedly. "You fellows have got to get out! I've got
something to do, and I can't be bothered."
The visitors grumbled. "There's true hospitality for you," objected they;
"turn your best friends out into the cold world! I like that!"
"Sorry, boys," insisted James, unmoved. "Got an inspiration. Get out!
Vamoose!"
They went, grumbling loudly down the length of the stairs, to the
disgust of the Lady with the Piano on the floor below.
"What're you up to, anyway, Jimmie?" inquired the brother with some
curiosity.
James had swept a space clear on the table, and was arranging some
stationery.
"Don't you care," he replied; "you just sit down and read your little
Omar for a while."
He plunged into the labours of composition, and Bert sat smoking
meditatively. After some moments the writer passed a letter over to the
smoker.
"Think it'll do?" he inquired.
Bert read the letter through carefully.
"Jeems," said he, after due deliberation, "Jeems, you're a blooming
genius."
James stamped the envelope.
"I'll mail it for you when I go out in the morning," Bert suggested.
"Not on your daily bread, sonny. It is posted now by my own hand. We
won't take any chances on this layout, and that I can tell you."
He tramped down four flights and to the corner, although it was
midnight and bitter cold. Then, with a seraphic grin on his countenance,
he went to bed and slept the sleep of the just.
The envelope was addressed to a Mr. James Fay, Spanish Gulch, South
Dakota.
CHAPTER II
THE STORY-BOOK WEST
When a man is twenty-one, and has had no experience, and graduates
from a small college where he roomed alone in splendour, and
possesses a gift of words and a certain delight in reading, and is thrown
into new and, to him, romantic surroundings--when all these stars of
chance cross their orbits, he begins to write a novel. The novel never
has anything to do with the aforesaid new and romantic surroundings;
neither has it the faintest connection with anything the author has ever
seen. That would limit his imagination.
Once he was well settled in his new home, and the first excitement of
novel impressions had worn off, Bennington de Laney began to write
regularly three hours a day. He did his scribbling with a fountain pen,
on typewriter paper, and left a broad right-hand margin, just as he had
seen Brooks do. In it he experienced, above all, a delightful feeling of
power. He enjoyed to the
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