word which gave the trite sentence an individual touch that
appealed to Helen May. "It don't seem natural, somehow, to walk in a
country like this."

"Oh, and you've got to, while I ride your horse! Or, have you got to? Is
it just movie stuff, where a man rides behind on a horse, and lets the
girl ride in front? I mean, is it feasible, or just a stunt for
pictures?"

"Depends on the horse," Starr evaded. "It's got the say-so, mostly,
whether it'll pack one person or two. Rabbit will, and when I get tired
walking, I'll ride."

"Oh, that makes it better. I wasn't feeling comfortable riding, but men
are so queer about thinking they must give a woman all the choice bits of
comfort, and a woman has to give in or row about it. If you'll climb up
and ride when you feel like it, I'll just settle down and enjoy myself."

Settling down and enjoying herself seemed to consist of gazing out over
the desert and the hills and up at the sky that was showing the deep
purple of dusk. It was what Starr wanted most of all, just then, for it
left him free to study what she had told him of the big black automobile
with four coated and goggled men who had looked like Mexicans; four men
who had glared at her and then had speeded up to get away from her
possible scrutiny.

For the first time since she had seen it from the spring seat of a
jolting wagon from the one livery stable in Malpais, Helen May discovered
that this wild, strange land was beautiful. For the first time she
gloried in its bigness and its wildness, and did not resent its
barrenness. The little brown birds that fluttered close to the ground and
cheeped wistfully to one another in the dusk gave her an odd, sweet
thrill of companionship. Jack rabbits sitting up on their hind legs for
a brief scrutiny before they scurried away made her laugh to herself. The
reddened clouds that rimmed the purple were the radiant shores of a
wonderful, bottomless sea, where the stars were the mast lights on ships
hull down in the distance. She lifted her chest and drew in long breaths
of clean, sweet air that is like no other air, and she remembered all at
once that she had not coughed since daylight. She breathed again, deep
and long, and felt that she was drawing some wonderful, healing ether
into her lungs.

She looked at Starr, walking steadily along before her, swinging the
hoe-handle lightly in his right hand, setting his feet down in the
smoothest spots always and leaving nearly alw