on a single purple
cloud which was dissolving, becoming each moment smaller, more remote,
like a fleeing eagle, yet burning each instant with even more dazzling
flame of color than before--hasting as if to overtake the failing day.
A dream of still fairer lands, of conquest, and of love, swept over
her--became mirrored in her face. She had at this moment the wistful
gaze which comes to the eyes of the young when desire of the future is
strong.

Upon her musings a small sound broke, so faint, so far, she could not
tell from whence it came nor what its cause might be. It might have
been the rattle of a pebble under the feet of a near-by squirrel or
the scrambling rush of a distant bear. A few moments later the voice
of a man--very diminished and yet unmistakable--came pulsing down the
mountain-side.

The girl rose as lightly, as gracefully as a fawn who, roused but not
affrighted, stands on her imprint in the grass and waits and listens.

The man or men--for another voice could now be heard in answer--came
rapidly on, and soon a couple of men and a small pack-train came out
of a clump of thick trees at the head of a gulch, and, doubling
backward and forward, descended swiftly upon the girl, who stood, with
some natural curiosity, to let the travellers, whoever they might be,
pass and precede her down to the valley. She resented them, for the
reason that they cut short her reverie, her moment of spiritual peace.

The man who first appeared was a familiar type of the West, a small,
lean, sharp-featured, foxy-eyed mountaineer, riding gracefully yet
wearily--the natural horseman and trailer. Behind him two tired
horses, heaped with a camp outfit, stumbled, with low-hanging heads,
while at the rear, sitting his saddle sturdily rather than with
grace, rode a young man bareheaded, but otherwise in the
rough-and-ready dress of a plainsman. His eyes were on the sunset
also, and something in the manner of his beard, as well as in the
poise of his head, proclaimed him to be the master of the little
train, a man of culture and an alien.

At sight of the girl he smiled and bowed with a look of frank and most
respectful admiration, quite removed from the impudent stare of his
guide. His hands were gloved, he wore a neat shirt, and his tie was in
order--so much the girl saw as he faced her--and as he passed she
apprehended something strong and manly in the lines of his back and
shoulders. Plainly he was not to the saddle born, lik