文档介绍：LIN McLEAN
LIN McLEAN
By
OWEN WISTER
1
LIN McLEAN
DEDICATION
MY DEAR HARRY MERCER: When Lin McLean was only a hero in
manuscript, he received his first e and chastening beneath your
patient roof. By none so much as by you has he in private been helped and
affectionately disciplined, an now you must stand godfather to him upon
this public page.
Always yours,
OWEN WISTER
Philadelphia, 1897
2
LIN McLEAN
HOW LIN McLEAN WENT EAST
In the old days, the happy days, when Wyoming was a Territory with a
future instead of a State with a past, and the unfenced cattle grazed upon
her ranges by prosperous thousands, young Lin McLean awaked early one
morning in cow camp, and lay staring out of his blankets upon the world.
He would be twenty-two this week. He was the youngest cow-puncher in
camp. But because he could break wild horses, he was earning more
dollars a month than any man there, except one. The cook was a more
indispensable person. None save the cook was up, so far, this morning.
Lin's brother punchers slept about him on the ground, some motionless,
some shifting their prone heads to burrow deeper from the increasing day.
The busy work of spring was over, that of the fall, or beef round-up, not
e. It was mid-July, a lull for these hard-riding bachelors of the
saddle, and many unspent dollars stood to Mr. McLean's credit on the
ranch books.
"What's the matter with some variety?" muttered the boy in his
blankets.
The long range of the mountains lifted clear in the air. They slanted
from the purple folds and furrows of the pines that richly cloaked them,
upward into rock and grassy bareness until they broke remotely into bright
peaks, and filmed into the distant lavender of the north and the south. On
their western side the streams ran into Snake or into Green River, and so at
length met the Pacific. On this side, Wind River flowed forth from them,
descending out of the Lake of the Painted Meadows. A mere trout-brook it