d then darted into their house doorways.
She had knocked over two camp chairs in her excited efforts to reach the
brakeman, and assure herself that they were really prairie dogs.

But the climax had occurred shortly afterward when while going through a
country of sagebrush stretches and grim, almost naked buttes, she had
seen--actually seen a _cow boy!_ He was true to every description Virginia
had ever given her--sombrero, bandana, chaps and all! She could not see
his face, but she knew he must be fine-looking like the "Virginian" or
like Dick at the Hunter ranch. He was galloping through the sagebrush on a
mottled, ugly-looking broncho, doubtless bent on some secret errand.

Priscilla was seized with half a dozen impulses as she watched him. Should
she hurry through four cars and tell the others that they might see him
also? Should she send the porter? How any one could sleep at such a time
as this was far beyond her comprehension! But she had remained, rooted at
last to one spot, and watched him until he was lost to sight. How would it
seem, she wondered, to gallop alone through this country? She hoped the
cow boy had noticed the sun rise over the buttes; she hoped that even now
he was not blind to the great mountains in the distance, which were
reaching their blue summits toward the sky.

She drew a long breath of the thin, clear mountain air! So this was
Virginia's country! It was a big land! She understood now what Virginia
had meant by talking about the bigness of everything. The plains,
stretching on and on, gray-green with sagebrush, the gaunt mountain spurs,
the far-away real mountains, blue and snow-furrowed, the great, clear sky
over all! It must be wonderful at night with countless stars and a moon
looking down upon the loneliness of everything. There was something about
it all that, in some strange way, pulled out one's very soul--that made
one want to be big in thought, tolerant, kind!

The brakeman, perhaps alarmed at seeing his interesting passenger actually
standing still, had joined her at that moment. Priscilla pointed to a
speck in the sagebrush--the vanishing cow boy.

"A real cow boy!" she shouted above the rumble of the wheels.

"Humph!" grunted her companion. "Didn't you never see one before?"

"Never!" cried Priscilla fervently.

"It ain't no great sight!" returned the sophisticated brakeman.

"Perhaps not to you," Priscilla shouted in his ear, "but it would be if
you had dreamed of see