the road for a young fellow with his foot in his hand on the look-out for a job.
The way into the Dry Wood country lay along the river beside which the town of Jasper was built, keeping with it for a distance of twenty miles or so, leaving it then for the hills: This river, bank-full at that time, the springtime rise of it coming on from the melting snow, was an unlovely dark stream, full of swift whirlpools which bored like augers against the sandy shore. Looking at it from a hill-top, it seemed to lie flat, like a stream of quick-silver, on the white plain without confining banks, a few wind-torn cottonwood trees at its margin. It was a melancholy river watering a lonely land.
These harried cottonwoods along the river were only venturing their first tender leaves, for snow was to be found still in deep gullies, where it had packed hard as ice under the trampling of wild-raging winter storms; and on hillsides, where it had eddied in great drifts. Nature sweeps the sheeplands in that way, leaving the grazing-pastures bare, in a purpose that is beneficent and admirable, rough as its mighty hand may seem to man who must face it on the un-tempered wold.
For a country that appeared so empty, a great many people were traveling out of it toward Jasper that morning. Rawlins passed the salutation of the day with the grave and gay alike, taking their dust on his shoulders and hat, beginning to appear quite road-seasoned by the middle of the afternoon. There were wool trains, and single wagons loaded with wool; buggies carrying florid drovers and their rough-cheeked,
