Going over the hill, at Crow Creek, whose perfumed waters kiss the livery stables and abattoirs at Camp Carlin, three slender Sarah Bernhardt coyotes came towards the train, looking wistfully at me as if to say: "Why, partner, how you have fleshed up!" Answering them from the platform of the car, I said: "Go East, young men, and flesh up with the country." Honestly and seriously, I do think that if the coyote would change off and try the soft-shell crab diet for a while, he would pick right up. When I got to Laramie City the welcome was so warm that it almost wiped out the memory of my shabby reception in New York harbor last summer, on my return from Europe, when even my band went back on me and got drunk at Coney Island on the very money I had given them to use in welcoming me home again. Winter had been a little severe along the cattle ranges, and deceased cattle might be seen extending their swollen carcasses into the bright, crisp air as the train whirled one along at the rate of seven to eight miles per hour. The skinning of a frozen steer is a diverting and unusual proceeding. Col. Buffalo Bill, who served under Washington and killed buffalo and baby elephants at Valley Forge, according to an Italian paper, should put this feature into his show. Maybe he will when he reads this. The cow gentleman first selects a quick yet steady-going mule; then he looks for a dead steer. He does not have to look very far. He now fastens one end of the deceased to some permanent object. This is harder to find than the steer, however. He then attaches his rope to the hide of the remains, having cut it with his knife first. He next starts the mule off, and a mile or so away he discovers that the hide is entirely free from the cold and pulseless corps. Sometimes a cowboy tries to skin a steer before the animal is entirely dead, and when the former gets back to the place from which he was kicked, he finds that he has a brand new set of whiskers with which to surprise his friends. The Pacific roads have greatly improved in recent years, and though they do not dazzle one with their speed, they are much more comfortable to pass a few weeks on than they were when the eating-houses, or many of them, were in the hands of people who could not cook very well, but who made a great deal of money. Now you can eat in a good buffet-car, or a first-class dining-car, at your leisure, or you can stop off and get a good meal, or you can carry a few hens and eat hard-boiled eggs all over your neighbors. I do not think people on the cars ought to keep hens. It disturbs the other passengers and is anything but agreeable to the hens. Close confinement is never good for a hen that is advanced in years, and the cigar smoke from the rear of the car hurts her voice, I think. A PROPHET AND A PIUTE VI