d guide had the quality of his Indian mother--he knew when
to keep silence and when to speak. He led the way steadily, galloping
along on his little gray pony, with elbows flapping like a rooster about
to take flight.

There was a wonderful charm in this treeless land, it was so lonely and
so sinister. It appealed with great power to Curtis, while it appalled
his sister. The solitary buttes, smooth of slope and grotesque of line;
the splendid, grassy hollows, where the cattle fed; the burned-up mesas,
where nothing lived but the horned toad; the alkaline flats, leprous and
ashen; the occasional green line of cottonwood-trees, deep sunk in a dry
water-course--all these were typical of the whole vast eastern
water-shed of the continental divide, and familiar to the young officer,
for in such a land he had entered upon active service.

It was beautiful, but it was an ill place for a woman, as Jennie soon
discovered. The air, so dry, so fierce, parched her skin and pinched her
red lips. The alkali settled in a gray dust upon her pretty hair and
entered her throat, increasing her thirst to a keen pain.

"Oh, George! here is a little stream," she cried out.

"Courage, sis. We will soon get above the alkali. That water is rank
poison."

"It looks good," she replied, wistfully.

"We'll find some glorious water up there in that clump of willows," and
a few minutes' hard riding brought them to a gurgling little brook of
clear, cold water, and the girl not merely drank--she laved away all
traces of the bitter soil of the lower levels.

At about four o'clock the guide struck into a transverse valley, and
followed a small stream to its source in a range of pine-clad hills
which separate the white man's country from the Tetong reservation. As
they topped this divide, riding directly over a smooth swell, Curtis
drew rein, crying out, "Wait a moment, Louie."

They stood on the edge of a vast dip in the plain, a bowl of amethyst
and turquoise. Under the vivid October sun the tawny grass seemed to be
transmuted into something that shimmered, was translucent, and yet was
firm, while the opposite wall, already faintly in shadow, rose by two
degrees to snow-flecked mountains, faintly showing in the west and
north. On the floor of this resplendent amphitheatre a flock of cattle
fed irregularly, luminous as red and white and deep-purple beads. The
landscape was silent--as silent as the cloudless sky above. No bird or
beast, save the