There was one thing I was especially interested in seeing in Glendive--a school musical system that is probably without a near rival in any town in America five times as large. I was assured that, of a school enrolment of about a thousand, nearly two hundred pupils played some kind of a musical instrument. There was an orchestra of sixty pieces, and a boy's military band of sixty-five. Each was divided into junior and senior grades, and a member was pushed ahead or dropped back according to talent and effort. At no time did a pupil have a place cinched; nothing but steady conscientious effort, regular attendance at rehearsals, and proper general deportment won promotion, or prevented demotion. Perhaps the finest thing about the whole system, was the fact that it was undertaken entirely apart from the regular curriculum, no school credits whatever being given for the work. I was told the credit for this fine achievement belonged to a principal of one of the grade schools, a Miss Lucille Hennigar, who had put herself behind it purely out of love of music and children. I did not have the honour of meeting Miss Hennigar, but I did make the acquaintance of some of her protégés. First and last, about two score of them must have chanced along in the hour I was tinkering with my boat late Sunday afternoon. They were regular fellows all right (every other one wanted to come down in the morning and sign on with me), but not a hoodlum in the lot. Not a mother's darling of them tried to kick a hole in my little tin shallop. As none of them exhibited any symptoms of infantile paralysis, I decided it must be music--quieting the mean foot as well as soothing the savage breast. [Illustration: ONE OF THE FAMOUS SCHOOL BANDS OF GLENDIVE] Warned by every authority from Captain Clark to an agate-hunter I had passed at the mouth of the Powder that I was now approaching the "Mosquito Coast" of the Yellowstone, I made special point of preparing to go into battle by getting the best kind of a sleep I could in Glendive. This made it particularly gratifying to find that this good little city had just about the cleanest, most comfortable and best run hotel in the valley. I should have paid it that tribute even had not its genial manager, in company with the Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, driven down to see me off--bringing an especially appealing little cold lunch.