"My sister was saying last night as she saw you sitting where you are now--that we should always associate this corner with you. Don't get up." Gertrude Brock, dressed for dinner, stood in the doorway. "You never tire of watching the track," she said, sinking into the chair he offered as he rose. Her frank manner was unlooked for, but he knew they were soon to part and felt that something of that was behind her concession. He answered in his mood. "The track, the mountains," he replied; "I have little else." "Would not many consider the mountains enough?" "No doubt." "I should think them a continual inspiration." "So they are; though sometimes they inspire too much." "It is so still and beautiful through here." She leaned back in her chair, supported her elbows on its arms and clasped her hands; the stealing charm of her cordiality had already roused him. "This bit of track we are covering," said he after a pause, "is the first I built on this division; and just now I have been recalling my very first sight of the mountains." She leaned slightly forward, and again he was coaxed on. "Every tradition of my childhood was associated with this country--the plains and rivers and mountains. It wasn't alone the reading--though I read without end--but the stories of the old French traders I used to hear in the shops, and sometimes of trappers I used to find along the river front of the old town; I fed on their yarns. And it was always the wild horse and the buffalo and the Sioux and the mountains--I dreamed of nothing else. Now, so many times, I meet strangers that come into the mountains--foreigners often--and I can never listen to their rhapsodies, or even read their books about the Rockies, without a jealousy that they are talking without leave of something that's mine. What can the Rockies mean to them? Surely, if an American boy has a heritage it is the Rockies. What can they feel of what I felt the first time I stood at sunset on the plains and my very dreams loomed into the western sky? I toppled on my pins just at seeing them." She laughed softly. "You are fond of the mountains." "I have little else," he repeated. "Then they ought to be loyal to you. But the first impression--it hardly remains, I suppose?" "I am not sure. They don't grow any smaller; sometimes I think they grow bigger." "Then you _are_ fond of them. That's constancy, and constancy is a capital test of a charm." "But I'm never sure whether they are, as you say, loyal to me. We had once on this division a remarkable man named Hailey--a bridge engineer, and a very great one. He and I stood one night on a caisson at the Spider Water--the first caisson he put into the river--do you remember that big river you crossed on the plains----" "Indeed! I am not likely to forget a night I spent at the Spider Water; continue."