been pared smooth by the slow knife of some old glacier. The sides
of the butte looked almost gay in the morning light in their soft tones
of blue and red.

"From appearances it might very well be," agreed Agnes.

She looked at Smith and smiled. There was the glory of untrammeled space
in her clear eyes, a yearning as of the desert-born on the far bounds of
home. Smith drove on, his back very straight.

"Older," said he with laconic finality after holding his peace for a
quarter of a mile.

Smith spoke as if he had known both Adam and the butte for a long time,
and so was an unquestionable authority. Agnes was not disposed to
dispute him, so they lurched on in silence along the dust-cushioned
road.

"That ain't the one the Indian girl jumped off of, though," said Smith,
meditatively.

"Isn't it?"

She turned to him quickly, ready for a story from the picturesque
strangler of bears. Smith was looking between the ears of the
off-leader. He volunteered no more.

"Well, where is the one she jumped from?" she pressed.

"Nowhere," said Smith.

"Oh!" she said, a bit disappointed.

"Everywhere I've went," said he, "they've got some high place where the
Indian girl jumped off of. In Mezoury they've got one, and even in
Kansas. They've got one in Minnesota and Illinoy and Idaho, and bend my
eyebrows if I know all the places they ain't got 'em! But don't you
never let 'em take you in on no such yarns. Them yarns is for suckers."

Somehow Agnes felt grateful toward Smith, whose charitable purpose
doubtless was to prevent her being taken in. But she was sorry for the
fine tradition and hated to give it up.

"But _didn't_ one ever jump off a cliff or--anything?" she asked.

Smith struck out with a free-arm swing and cracked his whip so loudly
that three female heads were at once protruded from the windows below.

"What I want to know," said he argumentatively, "is, who seen 'em
jump?"

"I don't know," she admitted; "but I suppose they found their bodies."

"Don't you believe it!" depreciated Smith. "Indian maidens ain't the
jumpin' kind. I never seen one of 'em in my day that wouldn't throw down
the best feller she ever had for a red umbreller and a dime's worth of
stick candy."

"I'm sorry for the nice stories your knowledge of the Indian character
spoils," she laughed.

"The thing of it in this country is, miss, not to let 'em take you in,"
Smith continued. "That's what they're out for--to take in suckers.