utte, diamond-glittering on
its hills in the dark; into Missoula, where there are trees and a
university, with a mountain in everybody's backyard; through the
Flathead Agency, where scarlet-blanketed Indians stalk out of tepees and
the papoose rides on mother's back as in forgotten days; down to St.
Ignatius, that Italian Alp town with its old mission at the foot of
mountains like the wall of Heaven, Claire had driven west, then north.
She was sailing past Flathead Lake, where fifty miles of mountain glory
are reflected in bright waters. Everywhere were sections of flat
wheat-plains, stirring with threshing, with clattering machinery and the
flash of blown straw. But these miniature prairies were encircled by
abrupt mountains.

Mr. Boltwood remarked, "I'd rather have one of these homesteads and look
across my fields at those hills than be King of England." Not that he
made any effort to buy one of the homesteads. But then, he made no
appreciable effort to become King of England.

Claire had not seen Milt for a day and a half; not since the morning
when both cars had left Butte. She wondered, and was piqued, and
slightly lonely. Toward evening, when she was speculating as to whether
she would make Kalispell--almost up to the Canadian border--she saw a
woman run into the road from a house on the shore of Flathead Lake. The
woman held out her hand. Claire pulled up.

"Are you Miss Boltwood?"

It was as startling as the same question would have been in a Chinese
village.

"W-why, yes."

"Somebody trying to get you on the long-distance 'phone."

"Me? 'Phone?"

She was trembling. "Something's happened to Milt. He needs me!" She
could not manage her voice, as she got the operator on the farmers'-line
wire, and croaked, "Was some one trying to get Miss Boltwood?"

"Yes. This Boltwood? Hotel in Kalispell trying to locate you, for two
hours. Been telephoning all along the line, from Butte to Somers."

"W-well, w-will you g-get 'em for me?"

It was not Milt's placid and slightly twangy voice but one smoother,
more decisive, perplexingly familiar, that finally vibrated, "Hello!
Hello! Miss Boltwood! Operator, I can't hear. Get me a better
connection. Miss Boltwood?"

"Yes! Yes! This is Miss Boltwood!" she kept beseeching, during a long
and not unheated controversy between the unknown and the crisp operator,
who knew nothing of the English language beyond, "Here's your party. Why
don't you talk? Speak louder!"

The