Lin McLean

by Owen Wister
DEDICATION

MY DEAR HARRY MERCER: When Lin McLean was only a hero in manuscript, he
received his first welcome 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

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

yet come. 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 was up there at the top of the divide, with easy

riffles and stepping-stones in many places; but down here, outside the
mountains, it was become a streaming avenue, a broadening course,

impetuous between its two tall green walls of cottonwood-trees. And so it
wound away like a vast green ribbon across the lilac-gray sage-brush and

the yellow, vanishing plains.
"Variety, you bet!" young Lin repeated, aloud.

He unrolled himself from his bed, and brought from the garments that made
his pillow a few toilet articles. He got on his long boy legs and limped

blithely to the margin. In the mornings his slight lameness was always
more visible. The camp was at Bull Lake Crossing, where the fork from

Bull Lake joins Wind River. Here Lin found some convenient
shingle-stones, with dark, deepish water against them, where he plunged

his face and energetically washed, and came up with the short curly hair
shining upon his round head. After enough looks at himself in the dark

water, and having knotted a clean, jaunty handkerchief at his throat, he
returned with his slight limp to camp, where they were just sitting at

breakfast to the rear of the cook-shelf of the wagon.
"Bugged up to kill!" exclaimed one, perceiving Lin's careful dress.

"He sure has not shaved again?" another inquired, with concern.
"I ain't got my opera-glasses on," answered a third.

"He has spared that pansy-blossom mustache," said a fourth.
"My spring crop," remarked young Lin, rounding on this last one, "has

juicier prospects than that rat-eaten catastrophe of last year's hay
which wanders out of your face."

"Why, you'll soon be talking yourself into a regular man," said the
other.

But the camp laugh remained on the side of young Lin till breakfast was
ended, when the ranch foreman rode into camp.

Him Lin McLean at once addressed. "I was wantin' to speak to you," said
he.

The experiencedforeman noticed the boy's holiday appearance. "I
understand you're tired of work," he remarked.

"Who told you?" asked the bewildered Lin.
The foreman touched the boy's pretty handkerchief. "Well, I have a way of

taking things in at a glance," said he. "That's why I'm foreman, I
expect. So you've had enough work?"

"My system's full of it," replied Lin, grinning. As the foreman stood
thinking, he added, "And I'd like my time."

Time, in the cattle idiom, meant back-pay up to date.
"It's good we're not busy," said the foreman.

"Meanin' I'd quit all the same?" inquired Lin, rapidly, flushing.
"No--not meaning any offence. Catch up your horse. I want to make the

post before it gets hot."
The foreman had come down the river from the ranch at Meadow Creek, and

the post, his goal, was Fort Washakie. All this part of the country
formed the Shoshone Indian Reservation, where, by permission, pastured

the herds whose owner would pay Lin his time at Washakie. So the young
cow-puncher flung on his saddle and mounted.

"So-long!" he remarked to the camp, by way of farewell. He might never be
going to see any of them again; but the cow-punchers were not

demonstrative by habit.
"Going to stop long at Washakie?" asked one.

"Alma is not waiter-girl at the hotel now," another mentioned.
"If there's a new girl," said a third, "kiss her one for me, and tell her

I'm handsomer than you."
"I ain't a deceiver of women," said Lin.

"That's why you'll tell her," replied his friend.
"Say, Lin, why are you quittin' us so sudden, anyway?" asked the cook,

grieved to lose him.
"I'm after some variety," said the boy.

"If you pick up more than you can use, just can a little of it for me!"
shouted the cook at the departing McLean.

This was the last of camp by Bull Lake Crossing, and in the foreman's
company young Lin now took the road for his accumulated dollars.

"So you're leaving your bedding and stuff with the outfit?" said the
foreman.

"Brought my tooth-brush," said Lin, showing it in the breast-pocket of
his flannel shirt.

"Going to Denver?"
"Why, maybe."

"Take in San Francisco?"
"Sounds slick."

"Made any plans?"
"Gosh, no!"

"Don't want anything on your brain?"
"Nothin' except my hat, I guess," said Lin, and broke into cheerful song:

"'Twas a nasty baby anyhow,
And it only died to spite us;

'Twas afflicted with the cerebrow
Spinal meningitis!'"

They wound up out of the magic valley of Wind River, through the
bastioned gullies and the gnome-like mystery of dry water-courses, upward

and up to the level of the huge sage-brush plain above. Behind lay the
deep valley they had climbed from, mighty, expanding, its trees like

bushes, its cattle like pebbles, its opposite side towering also to the
edge of this upper plain. There it lay, another world. One step farther

away from its rim, and the two edges of the plain had flowed together
over it like a closing sea, covering without a sign or ripple the great

country which lay sunk beneath.