CHAPTER II.
The White Divide.
If a phrenologist should undertake to "read" my head, he would undoubtedly find my love of home--if that is what it is called--a sharply defined welt.

I know that I watched the lights of old Frisco slip behind me with as virulent a case of the deeps as often comes to a man when his digestion is good.

It wasn't that I could not bear the thought of hardship; I've taken hunting trips up into the mountains more times than I can remember, and ate ungodly messes of my own invention, and waded waist-deep in snow and slept under the stars, and enjoyed nearly every minute.

So it wasn't the hardships that I had every reason to expect that got me down.

I think it was the feeling that dad had turned me down; that I was in exile, and--in his eyes, at least--disgraced, it was knowing that he thought me pretty poor truck, without giving me a chance to be anything better.
I humped over the rail at the stern, and watched the waves slap at us viciously, like an ill-tempered poodle, and felt for all the world like a dog that's been kicked out into the rain.