IL

Many disquieting thoughts oppressed Miss Sheila Langford as she halted her
pony on the crest of a slight rise and swept the desolate and slumberous
world with an anxious glance. Quite the most appalling of these thoughts
developed from a realization of the fact that she had lost the trail. The
whole categorical array of inconveniences incidental to traveling in a
new, unsettled country paled into insignificance when she considered this
horrifying and entirely unromantic fact. She was lost; she had strayed
from the trail, she was alone and night was coming.

She would not have cared so much about the darkness, for she had never
been a coward, and had conditions been normal she would have asked nothing
better than a rapid gallop over the dim plains. But as she drew her pony
up on the crest of the rise a rumble of thunder reached her ears. Of
course it would rain, now that she had lost the trail, she decided,
yielding to a sudden, bitter anger. It usually did rain when one was
abroad without prospect of shelter; it always rained when one was lost.

Well, there was no help for it, of course, and she had only herself to
blame for the blunder. For the other--not unusual--irritating details that
had combined to place her in this awkward position she could blame, first
Duncan, the manager of the Double R--who should have sent someone to meet
her at the station; the station agent--who had allowed her to set forth in
search of the Double R without a guide,--though even now, considering this
phase of the situation, she remembered that the agent had told her there
was no one to send--and certainly the desolate appearance of Lazette had
borne out this statement; and last, she could blame the country itself for
being an unfeatured wilderness.

Something might be said in extenuation of the station agent's and the
Double R manager's sins of omission, but without doubt the country was
what she had termed it--an unfeatured wilderness. Her first sensation upon
getting a view of the country had been one of deep disappointment. There
was plenty of it, she had decided,--enough to make one shrink from its
very bigness; yet because it was different from the land she had been
accustomed to she felt that somehow it was inferior. Her father had
assured her of its beauty, and she had come prepared to fall in love with
it, but within the last half hour--when she had begun to realize that she
had lost the trail--she had grown to hate it.