miles.

Sally had as fast a horse as there was on the range; she made no weight
in the saddle, and she could ride. From time to time she looked back
over her shoulder.

I gained enough to make her think I was trying to catch her. Sally loved
a horse; she loved a race; she loved to win.

My good fortune had given me more than one ride alone with Sally. Miss
Sampson enjoyed riding, too; but she was not a madcap, and when she
accompanied us there was never any race.

When Sally got out alone with me she made me ride to keep her from
disappearing somewhere on the horizon. This morning I wanted her to
enjoy to the fullest her utter freedom and to feel that for once I could
not catch her.

Perhaps my declaration to Miss Sampson had liberated my strongest
emotions.

However that might be, the fact was that no ride before had ever been
like this one--no sky so blue, no scene so open, free, and enchanting as
that beautiful gray-green range, no wind so sweet. The breeze that
rushed at me might have been laden with the perfume of Sally Langdon's
hair.

I sailed along on what seemed a strange ride. Grazing horses pranced and
whistled as I went by; jack-rabbits bounded away to hide in the longer
clumps of grass; a prowling wolf trotted from his covert near a herd of
cattle.

Far to the west rose the low, dark lines of bleak mountains. They were
always mysterious to me, as if holding a secret I needed to know.

It was a strange ride because in the back of my head worked a haunting
consciousness of the deadly nature of my business there on the frontier,
a business in such contrast with this dreaming and dallying, this
longing for what surely was futile.

Any moment I might be stripped of my disguise. Any moment I might have
to be the Ranger.

Sally kept the lead across the wide plain, and mounted to the top of a
ridge, where tired out, and satisfied with her victory, she awaited me.
I was in no hurry to reach the summit of the long, slow-sloping ridge,
and I let my horse walk.

Just how would Sally Langdon meet me now, after my regretted exhibition
before her cousin? There was no use to conjecture, but I was not
hopeful.

When I got there to find her in her sweetest mood, with some little
difference never before noted--a touch of shyness--I concealed my
surprise.

"Russ, I gave you a run that time," she said. "Ten miles and you never
caught me!"

"But look at the start you had. I've had my troubles beating you wi