his weight into the pulling
at just the proper moment and relaxed as he felt the machine settle on
the firm ground. His master told us that the animal had come with their
little caravan from Colorado, seven hundred and twenty miles, without
turning a hair, while the other horse sickened and died.

This man had only his few supplies and the little tent in which they
were living, together with a bit of the rich land already cleared and
planted to a crop. He said that he had never seen richer land than this
from which the sage brush had been pulled up and burned off. A thin
muddy stream trickled across the road from the hills and was used both
for irrigation and for drinking purposes. "But when you come back next
year, I shall have a well down," said the brave homesteader. "And, by
George, if the County Commissioners won't put in a bridge across this
mud hole, I'll put one across myself! Just come back and see a year from
now!" We waved him goodbye and went on our way across the lone valley
and up another divide. The valley was Monitor Valley, he told us. I can
see him standing there in the lovely light of the late afternoon sun, he
and his wife and their baby boy waving us farewell. I should like to
pass that way again and to see whether he has replaced his tent by a
little house and whether his virgin fields are green with a crop.

Some day, I suppose, those wide, far-stretching acres will be dotted
with houses and barns and stacks of alfalfa. It is difficult to convey
the impression that these vast valleys with the hills in the distance,
and with the rich coloring of the sunrise and the sunset, make upon one.
They are lonely and yet they are not lonely. They are full of life. We
saw hundreds of prairie dogs. Day after day they scuttled across our
pathway, often narrowly escaping. Sometimes they sat on their hind legs
by their burrows, waiting as long as they dared until the noise of the
machine frightened them into their holes. Sometimes a whole village of
them would watch us until we drew near, and then frantically disappear.
Sometimes we saw a coyote, usually in the early morning or the late
afternoon. We once saw one whose curiosity was so great that he halted
perhaps fifty yards away, and looked at us from this safe distance as we
passed. Once we saw a rabbit breathing his last near the roadside, his
soft eyes filled with a look of far away consciousness and pain. And
once we saw a beautiful antelope leaping and bou