Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.fadedpage.net [Illustration: SLOWLY HE WAS LET DOWN] ROSS GRANT TENDERFOOT BY JOHN GARLAND AUTHOR OF "Ross Grant, Gold Hunter" "Ross Grant on the Trail" Illustrated by R. L. Boyer THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY PHILADELPHIA 1917 COPYRIGHT 1915 BY THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY Ross Grant, Tenderfoot To Mr. and Mrs. C. H. Tewksbury whose life in the Wyoming Mountains has made Ross Grant, Tenderfoot, possible, I cordially dedicate this book INTRODUCTION WHEN I went over the same route, some time before Ross Grant traveled it, from Cody eighty miles into the snow-capped Shoshones, I found how welcome a "Doc Tenderfoot" would be in the gold mining camp at the end of the route. There was, in camp, the superintendent of one of the mining companies, a man who had never had any instruction in things medical or surgical, but who, with a steady hand and a cool head, and an acquired knowledge of "first aids," was often called on in case of sickness and accident, as there was no doctor nearer than Cody. Such a state of affairs greeted Ross Grant when he arrived with his medical "emergency chest" and his real knowledge of the use to which its contents should be put. Also, I found a certain "outfit" of men, not McKenzie in name but in nature, waiting to "jump" certain valuable "claims" provided the owners failed in any particular to measure up to the requirements of the law. Their intention was to do the "jumping" legally and not through "gun play," which is becoming an obsolete custom in that great state. Then, too, I discovered over on a real Meadow Creek Valley--exactly the same place that Ross found--a real "Dutch Weimer" afflicted with snow-blindness, imprisoned for months at a time in the little valley because of the danger from snowslides on the mountainsides. And, by the way, if you should ever follow this same interesting trail from Cody up into the mountains, you would find "Ross Grant, Tenderfoot" an accurate guide-book until you reached the end of the stage route. There you would find that Miners' Camp is a fictitious name applied to a real place. And if you should chance to be in camp on the Fourth of July, you would realize fully the difficulties that Ross had to contend against in the vast snowfalls. For the year I visited the mountains the glorious Fourth was celebrated by snow-shoe races down the mountainsides! There are snow-storms every month in the year there, but Miners' Camp is comparatively free from snow during August and September. These are the months, then, when gold hunters, "prospectors," are most numerous in the mountains. I saw them everywhere with their "pack outfits" bound on wooden saddles, seeking in the rocks for indications of a fortune that is as elusive in their business as the proverbial "pot of gold at the end of a rainbow."