nt for the daughter he had never had.
His pride in her, Madeline thought, was beyond reason or belief or
words to tell. Under his guidance, sometimes accompanied by Alfred and
Florence, Madeline had ridden the ranges and had studied the life and
work of the cowboys. She had camped on the open range, slept under the
blinking stars, ridden forty miles a day in the face of dust and wind.
She had taken two wonderful trips down into the desert--one trip to
Chiricahua, and from there across the waste of sand and rock and alkali
and cactus to the Mexican borderline; and the other through the Aravaipa
Valley, with its deep, red-walled canyons and wild fastnesses.

This breaking-in, this training into Western ways, though she had been
a so-called outdoor girl, had required great effort and severe pain; but
the education, now past its grades, had become a labor of love. She
had perfect health, abounding spirits. She was so active hat she had to
train herself into taking the midday siesta, a custom of the country
and imperative during the hot summer months. Sometimes she looked in
her mirror and laughed with sheer joy at sight of the lithe, audacious,
brown-faced, flashing-eyed creature reflected there. It was not so much
joy in her beauty as sheer joy of life. Eastern critics had been wont to
call her beautiful in those days when she had been pale and slender and
proud and cold. She laughed. If they could only see her now! From the
tip of her golden head to her feet she was alive, pulsating, on fire.

Sometimes she thought of her parents, sister, friends, of how they had
persistently refused to believe she could or would stay in the West.
They were always asking her to come home. And when she wrote, which was
dutifully often, the last thing under the sun that she was likely to
mention was the change in her. She wrote that she would return to her
old home some time, of course, for a visit; and letters such as this
brought returns that amused Madeline, sometimes saddened her. She meant
to go back East for a while, and after that once or twice every year.
But the initiative was a difficult step from which she shrank. Once
home, she would have to make explanations, and these would not be
understood. Her father's business had been such that he could not leave
it for the time required for a Western trip, or else, according to his
letter, he would have come for her. Mrs. Hammond could not have been
driven to cross the Hudson River; her