way, but White Antelope said
it was the big ride--maybe a hundred sleeps. And lookee"--she unfolded
fashion plates of several periods. "I've even picked out the clothes I'll
buy to put on when I get nearly to the ranch where they live. I can make
camp, you know, and change my clothes, and then go walkin' down the road
carryin' this here parasol and wearin' this here white hat and holdin' up
this here long skirt like Teacher on Sunday.

"Won't they be surprised when they open the door and see me standin' on
the door-step? I'll say, 'How do you do? I'm Susie MacDonald, your
relation what's come to visit you.' I think this would be better than
showin' up with Running Rabbit and the pack-outfit, until I'd kind of
broke the news to 'em. I'd keep Running Rabbit cached in the brush till I
sent for him.

"You see, I've thought about it so much that it seems like it was as good
as done; but maybe when I start I won't find it so easy. I might have to
ride clear to this Minnesota country, or beyond the big waters to the New
York or Connecticut country, mightn't I?"

"You might," McArthur replied soberly.

"But I'd take a lot of jerked elk, and everybody says grub's easy to get
if you have money, I'd start with about nine ponies in my string, so it
looks like I ought to get through?"

She waited anxiously for McArthur to express his opinion.

He wondered how he could disillusionize her, shatter the dream which he
could see had become a part of her life. Should he explain to her that
when she had crossed the mountains and left behind her the deserts which
constituted the only world she knew, and by which, with its people, she
judged the country she meant to penetrate, she would find herself a
bewildered little savage in a callous, complex civilization where she had
no place--wondered at, gibed at, defeated of her purpose?

"Are you sure you have no other clues--no old letters, no photographs?"

She was about to answer when a tapping like the pecking of a snowbird on
a window-sill was heard on the door.

Susie opened it.

In ludicrous contrast to the timid rap, a huge figure that all but filled
it was framed in the doorway.

It was "Babe" from the Bar C ranch; "Baby" Britt, curly-haired,
pink-cheeked, with one innocent blue eye dark from recent impact with a
fist, which gave its owner the appearance of a dissipated cherub.

"Evenin'," he said tremulously, his eyes roving as though in search of
some one.

"I lost a hor