e declared in a voice
that seemed to quaver with awe.

"It's sure a beauty," agreed Harlan. "I've been in a heap of places where
they had sunsets, but dump 'em all together an' they wouldn't make an
edge on this display. She's sure a hummer!"

The girl's eyes seemed to leap at his praise.

"I never want to leave this place," she said. "There is nothing like it.
Those two mountains that you see far out into the west--where the sun is
going down--are about forty miles distant. If you will notice, you can
see that there are other mountains--much smaller--connected with them.
They are two small ranges, and they melt into the plains there--and
there."

She pointed to the south and to the north, where the two ranges,
seemingly extending straight westward, merged into the edge of the big
level where Barbara and Harlan sat on their horses.

The two ranges were perhaps a dozen miles apart, separated by a low level
valley through which ran a narrow river, its surface glowing like
burnished gold in the rays of the sinking sun.

Gazing westward--straight into the glow--Harlan noted the virgin wildness
of the immense valley. It lay, serene, slumberous; its salient
features--ridges, low hills, rocky promontories and wooded slopes--touched
by the rose tints that descended upon them; while in the depressions
reigned purple shadows, soft-toned, blending perfectly with the brighter
colors.

With the sunset glow upon it; with the bastioned hills--barren at their
peaks, ridged and seamed--looming clear and definite above the vast
expanse of green, the colossal valley stretched, with no movement in it
or above it--in a vacuum-like stillness that might have reigned over the
world on the dawn of creation's first morning.

Harlan looked covertly at Barbara. The girl's face was pale, and her eyes
were glowing with a light that made him draw a long breath of sympathy
and understanding. But it had been many years since he had felt the
thrill of awe that she was experiencing at this minute.

He knew that presently the spell would pass, and that material things
would exact their due. And the resulting contrast between the beauty of
the picture upon which she was gazing, and the solemn realization of loss
that memory would bring, instantly, would almost crush her.

Therefore he spoke seriously when he caught her looking at him.

"There's sunsets _an'_ sunsets," he said. "They tell me that they're a
heap common in some parts of the world