H. Irving Hancock / HIrving Hancock
Look, Tom! There is a real westerner! Harry Hazelton’s eyes sparkled, his whole manner was one of intense interest. 'Eh?' queried Tom Reade, turning around from his distant view of a sharp, towering peak of the Rockies. 'There’s the real hing in the way of a westerner,' Harry Hazelton insisted in a voice in which there was some awe. 'I don’t believe he is,' retorted Tom skeptically. 'You’re going to say, I suppose, that the man is just some freak escaped from the pages of a dime novel?' demanded Harry. 'No; he looks more like a hostler on a leave of absence from a stranded Wild West show,' Tom replied slowly. There was plenty of time for them to inspect the stranger in question. Tom and Harry were seated on a mountain springboard wagon drawn by a pair of thin horses. Their driver, a boy of about eighteen, sat on a tiny make-believe seat almost over the traces. This youthful driver had been minding his own business so assiduously during the past three hours that Harry had voted him a sullen fellow. This however, the driver was not.