"We must be pretty nearly there now, Tom, I take it!" "I reckon we'll sight the dugout inside of half an hour or so, Felix; if the description, and the little chart old Sol Ten Eyck gave me, are correct." "Well, I'll sure be glad when we arrive, because this pack is getting heavier, it seems to me, every hour now. One thing certain, Chum Tom, we'll go out of this part of the country a heap lighter than we're coming in; with all this good grub swallowed up after two months roughing it. Been three days on the trail now, since Frazer turned us loose out of his big bull-boat." They were two pretty well-grown boys, the one tall and slender; while the other, whom he called Tom, seemed stockily built, with the ruddy hue of perfect health on his sun and wind tanned cheeks. Tom was really Tom Tucker, and the taller young hunter, Felix Edmondson. Besides repeating rifles of a modern make, and such ordinary accompaniments as ditty bags and hunting knives, the lads were carrying heavy packs on their backs, to each of which were also strapped a pair of snow-shoes, proving that they anticipated staying around the foothills of the great Rocky Mountains, for some time at least, and were prepared for getting around when several feet of snow covered the ground. They were in a region not a great distance from the border of that Wonderland which Uncle Sam has transferred into a grand playground, known far and wide as the Yellowstone Park. In fact, a range of the Rocky Mountains towered almost above them as they looked up, standing out against the blue afternoon sky like a rock-ribbed barrier. Around them lay the great forest that in many places grows at the base of the giant uplifts that are well called the back-bone of the continent. It was a wild region, seldom pressed by the foot of man; save when some Indian or trapper chose to pursue his calling—the "primeval wilderness," Felix was fond of calling it, in his humorous way. Felix was a city-bred boy who had ambitions to take up his father's profession later in life, and shine as a surgeon. But not being very strong, it was under this parent's wise advice that he was now knocking off for a year from his studies, and getting in the great Outdoors all he possibly could, in order to build himself up, so as to have a good foundation for the hard work that lay before him. And he was succeeding wonderfully, since there is nothing better under the sun to change a weakly boy into a sturdy man than this free life of the Wild West. If proof of this statement were needed, it could be demonstrated in the life of Theodore Roosevelt himself, who took the same course of treatment. As for Tom Tucker, he had always lived pretty much in the open ever since his father bought that Wyoming cattle range with its herds. Between times Tom had attended school, so that he was far from being ignorant; the fact of his great love of reading also put him in touch with what was going on in the world, whether in the line of scientific discoveries, exploration, or the constant change in the map of nations.