And then ring in the change from the desert heat of midsummer to trifles like thirty below in winter along the same landscape, when you see the ghostly cottonwoods and anticipate your arrival among them some hours later. Won't there be a roaring fire? And beans? And bacon? And pones of bread for everyone? Wet stockings piled on inverted yokes or held on pieces of brush, are drying, we are nursing our chilblains and discussing the incidents of the day's drive, and not a weakling in the outfit. Every man has been frozen or soaked all day, but he's as happy as a lark. Sleep? You bet! You know it; but if you and I tell our friends around our comfortable firesides now or in the lobby of an onyx-walled Waldorf-Astoria, Belmont or Biltmore, that we just kicked a hole in the snow, rolled into our blankets and dreamed of being roasted to death, they would look at your well-shaven face, my biled shirt, and then at your highly polished shoes, then at my black derby, and, dammit, I believe they might be justified in forming the opinion that neither one of us had ever been deprived of breakfast food, or bath tubs, or a manicure artist's services.* * * You want to know if I can locate any of the old gang. Sure! Some sleep in the sidehills along the swift-flowing waters of the North Platte, one or two are parts of gravel beds down on the wild meadows--or what were the wild meadows of hundreds of square miles between the North Platte and the Poudre; but not a few, like you and I, stalk abroad on the face of the earth--cheating first, as we did, tribes of Sioux, Arapahoe, Cheyenne and the Comanches who swept up across Kansas and Nebraska; escaping the blizzards, periods of starvation, cold, heat, fire, water, whisky, and finally the surgeon's knife. I tell you, the world only thinks it knows a thing or two about how the human body is made, and how much it can stand. But to answer your questions: Jim Bansom, the last time I knew of him, in 1875, was headed east with a fine span of hosses and a fair-to-middlin' wagon. Don't know where he went and don't know what he did with the hosses or the wagon! 'Taint none o' my bizness, neither! In those days it wasn't customary to be too gol-darned inquisitive about such things, unless you owned the hosses or the wagon, or a bit, or a halter, or something of that sort you happened to loan to the outfit; and then, of course, you could take the trail if you wanted to. * * * * * Sam Smith, old U. P. conductor, walked into my office a while ago, and, as he closed the door behind him, I said, "Hello, Sam; haven't seen you since 1875, but you're the same Sam!" Then I told him my name.