The population of Lame Horse was 160, give or take a dozen. The blacktop stopped right in front of Vawter's General Store, but the road went on, curving left a little ahead. Having been to Timberburg, we needed nothing at Vawter's, so we didn't stop. From there it was 2.8 miles to the turnoff to Lily's ranch, and another 300 yards to the turnoff to her cabin. In that three miles you climbed nearly 2000 feet. To get to the ranch buildings you crossed a bridge over Berry Creek, but from there the creek took a swing to make a big loop, and the cabin was in the loop, only a few hundred yards inside the ranch boundary. To get to the ranch buildings on foot from the cabin you had to cross the creek, either by the bridge or, much shorter, by fording just outside the cabin. In August there was a spot where it could be done by stone-stepping. A better name for it would be boulder-bouncing.

My favourite spot on earth is only a seven-minute walk from where I live, Nero Wolfe's house on West 35th Street: Herald Square, where you can see more different kinds of people in ten minutes than anywhere else I know of. One day I saw the top cock of the Mafia step back to let a Sunday-school teacher from Iowa go first through the revolving door of the world's largest department store. If you ask how I knew who they were, I didn't, but that's what they looked like. But for anyone who is fed up with people and noise, the favourite spot could be Lily Rowan's cabin clearing. I admit there is a little noise, Berry Creek making a fuss about the rocks that won't move, but after a couple of days you hear it only when you want to. The big firs start farther up, but there are plenty of trees right there, mostly lodgepole pine, and downstream is Beaver Meadow; and just upstream, where the creek swings around again to the north, is a cliff of solid rock you can't see the top of from this side of the creek. If you need exercise and want to throw stones at gophers it's only a three-minute walk down the lane to the road.