her thoughts had been of the life she was leaving, and, it
must be admitted, of Joyce Henderson. From Illinois to Texas she told
herself exactly what she thought of a man who could so boldly and plainly
and with such an evident relief accept his dismissal at the hands of the
girl he had claimed to love; but by the time the train had jogged through
miles of queer brownish yellow country, dotted with mesquite and punctured
with cactus, relieved here and there by foothills, and frowned upon by
distant mountains, her meditations assumed a more cheerful complexion.

The outlook, monotonous as it was, fascinated her. There were adobe houses
with brown youngsters playing in the scanty shade, much as one sees them
in New Mexico and Arizona; there were uprooted rails and the ruins of
burned cars--evidences of civil war unknown on our side of the line. There
was a strong wind blowing--the early spring wind of the Southwest, but the
sun shone hotly and one felt stuffy and uncomfortable in the car. The sand
which was caught up by the wind blew in one's face and down one's throat
and made closed windows a necessity.

There were a good many people traveling, for a country in a reputedly
unsettled condition, Polly thought, and wished that she could understand
the fragments of conversation that she heard.

"Why didn't I take Spanish instead of French at school? I always seem to
have chosen the most useless things to study! I wish I knew what those two
fat women without any hats on are talking about--me, I suppose, for they
keep looking over here. That man is American--or English. If I were Bob,
I'd amble over and get up a conversation with him and find out all the
interesting things I'm missing. I'll bet he owns a mine down here
somewhere. How fascinating!"

Polly's imagination immediately forsook the American and indulged in a
rosy picture of herself as the owner of a mine--a gold mine--coal was too
unromantic. She saw herself in a short skirt and a sombrero superintending
the exertions of a number of dusky workers who were loading neat little
gold bars on the backs of patient burros.

This delightful picture occupied her fully until the train stopped and she
had to get out. This train did not go all the way to Conejo, but left one
at a junction called Pecos where twice a week if convenient for all
parties a smaller train rattled its way across the plain and into the
mountains among which Conejo nestled. It is not necessary to des