He stretched out his hand for the scribbled envelope on which I had pencilled the fragment. “May I keep that?” “Wait till I have it finished.” “I’d kind of like to have the start to keep.” He took it and shoved it awkwardly inside his coat. “I can’t read or write,” he said, more at his ease now the truth was out. “Nobody ever taught me nothin’.” But I was not at ease. “Well, that stuff of mine is not worth reading!” I said. Cards had a meaning for him--kings, queens, ten-spots--these had been the fellow’s only books! He went on, “Never had any folks, y’u see--to know ’em, that is.--Well, so-long till you’re back.” He turned to his cabin, and I touched my horse. The sorrel had gone but a few steps when I looked over my shoulder, and there stood the solitary figure, watching me from the cabin door. Suddenly it occurred to me that, as he had not been able to read my letter to Scipio, he knew nothing of my project. _This_ was why he had manifested no surprise! “Do you think,” I called back, laughing, “that your horse can take me to Still Hunt Spring?” I am now sure that a flash of some totally different expression crossed his face, but at the time I was not sure; he was instantly smiling. “Take y’u anywhere,” he called. “Take y’u to Mexico, take y’u to Hell!” “Oh, not yet!” I responded, and cantered away. So he thought I would not dare to go alone to Still Hunt Spring! Well and good; they should all believe it by Friday evening. My cantering ceased soon,--it had been for dramatic effect,--and as I had before me a long ride, it behooved me to walk the first miles. Yet I was soon up the easy ascent from North Fork, and though my descent to the main river from the dividing ridge was through precipitous red bluffs, and accomplished with caution, I reached the E-A ranch (where it used to be twenty-five years ago) in less than two hours. To leave my note there for Scipio took but a minute, and now on the level trail down Wind River I made good time, so that before ten o’clock I had crossed back over it above the Blue Holes, skirted by where the Circle fence is to-day, crossed North Fork here, gone up a gulch, and dropped down again upon Wind River below its abrupt bend, and reached the desolate Sand Gulch. I nooned at the spring which lies, no bigger than a hat, about seven miles up the Sand Gulch on its north side. This was the starting-point of the trail that old Washakie had drawn for me; here I crossed the threshold of the mysterious and the untrodden.