o middle age. Young people are too
self-centred to bother with it. I wonder if we're nearly there? I'm
dead."

"Well, my aching feet tell me we are, Clara, but my manly intelligence
suggests that if we've covered one-third of the distance we're mighty
lucky."

"That's about what I thought," groaned Clara. "How's your knee?"

"Peevish but possible. Shall we take a rest?"

"Oh dear, yes, and a bite."

They topped the next rise. It was decidedly a rise and commanded a wide
view of the flat part of the country. At a little distance rose a live oak
whose low branches offered a slight shelter from the sun. A cooling breeze
played about them, kicking up spirals of sand, and a prairie-dog village
manifested eager interest in their presence. They ate their sandwiches and
Hard returned to the subject of Scott and Polly.

"Do you think--you being a woman and acute in such matters--that he's
asked her yet?" he said.

"No, I don't; they both look too edgy. He's going to, however, and she's
going to take him, I think. I'm not sure. She may be flirting."

"If she flirts with Scott, I'll have her punished," declared Hard,
indignantly.

"Well, maybe she won't. She's a bit of a minx, though, and while she's
young she's no infant. Some girls have to do the world's flirting, Henry,
because the others won't--or can't. It wouldn't do to have things made too
easy for you."

"They are not," said Hard, with meaning.

"Well, this isn't getting to Soria's." Clara rose hastily. She looked back
over the road. "It looks like people back there--dust flying. Do you
suppose it's more troops?"

Hard stared. "No," he said, finally, "it's only the wind."

"Yes, I guess it is," assented Clara. "Let's be moving."

It was slow going--a lame man and a tired woman--both unused to walking
even under favorable circumstances. It seemed to Clara Conrad as she
looked ahead at the wearisome stretch of road, as though they made no more
progress than a couple of ants crawling up a mountainside.

"Do you think we'll ever make it?" she said, stopping for a long breath at
the top of a small rise.

"We've got to," said Hard, simply, "What else is there to do?"

Clara did not answer but looked longingly back toward the spot in the
cottonwoods.

"Don't play Lot's wife, Clara; keep on looking forward. It's our only
hope."

"Lot's wife always appealed to my sympathies," said Clara, pensively. "I
think she was probably a settled sort of a woman, marrie