te that trees were extraordinarily scarce.
Each hour westward from the pig confirmed this opinion, and when she
left the train at Rock Creek, late upon that fourth night,--in those
days the trains were slower,--she knew that she had really attained the
unknown, and sent an expensive telegram to say that she was quite well.

At six in the morning the stage drove away into the sage-brush, with her
as its only passenger; and by sundown she had passed through some of the
primitive perils of the world. The second team, virgin to harness, and
displeased with this novelty, tried to take it off, and went down to the
bottom of a gully on its eight hind legs, while Miss Wood sat mute and
unflinching beside the driver. Therefore he, when it was over, and they
on the proper road again, invited her earnestly to be his wife during
many of the next fifteen miles, and told her of his snug cabin and his
horses and his mine. Then she got down and rode inside, Independence and
Grandmother Stark shining in her eye. At Point of Rocks, where they had
supper and his drive ended, her face distracted his heart, and he told
her once more about his cabin, and lamentably hoped she would remember
him. She answered sweetly that she would try, and gave him her hand.
After all, he was a frank-looking boy, who had paid her the highest
compliment that a boy (or a man for that matter) knows; and it is said
that Molly Stark, in her day, was not a New Woman.

The new driver banished the first one from the maiden's mind. He was not
a frank-looking boy, and he had been taking whiskey. All night long he
took it, while his passenger, helpless and sleepless inside the lurching
stage, sat as upright as she possibly could; nor did the voices that she
heard at Drybone reassure her. Sunrise found the white stage lurching
eternally on across the alkali, with a driver and a bottle on the
box, and a pale girl staring out at the plain, and knotting in her
handkerchief some utterly dead flowers. They came to a river where the
man bungled over the ford. Two wheels sank down over an edge, and the
canvas toppled like a descending kite. The ripple came sucking through
the upper spokes, and as she felt the seat careen, she put out her
head and tremulously asked if anything was wrong. But the driver was
addressing his team with much language, and also with the lash.

Then a tall rider appeared close against the buried axles, and took her
out of the stage on his horse so sudd