er, an' your horse waitin' to be caught up."

He stepped quickly to Mustard's side and uncoiled his rope. She stood
on the porch, watching him as he proceeded to the corral, caught the
pony, and flung a bridle on it. Then he led the animal to the porch
and cinched the saddle carefully. Throwing the reins over the pommel
of the saddle, he stood at the animal's head, waiting.

She came to the edge of the porch, placed a slender, booted foot into
the ox-bow stirrup, and swung gracefully up. In an instant he had
vaulted into his own saddle, and together they rode out upon the
gray-white floor of the flat.

They rode two miles, keeping near the fringe of cottonwoods, and
presently mounted a long slope. Half an hour later Miss Radford looked
back and saw the flat spread out behind, silent, vast, deserted,
slumbering in the swimming white sunlight. A little later she looked
again, and the flat was no longer there, for they had reached the crest
of the slope and their trail had wound them round to a broad level,
from which began another slope, several miles distant.

They had ridden for more than two hours, talking very little, when they
reached the crest of the last rise and saw, spreading before them, a
level many miles wide, stretching away in three directions. It was a
grass plateau, but the grass was dry and drooping and rustled under the
ponies' hoofs. There were no trees, but a post oak thicket skirted the
southern edge, and it was toward this that he urged his pony. She
followed, smiling to think that he was deceiving himself in believing
that she had not yet explored this place.

They came close to the thicket, and he swung off his horse and stood at
her stirrup.

"I was wantin' you to see the country from here," he said, as he helped
her down. She watched him while he picketed the horses, so that they
might not stray. Then they went together to the edge of the thicket,
seating themselves in a welcome shade.

At their feet the plateau dropped sheer, as though cut with a knife,
and a little way out from the base lay a narrow ribbon of water that
flowed slowly in its rocky bed, winding around the base of a small
hill, spreading over a shallow bottom, and disappearing between the
buttes farther down.

Everything beneath them was distinguishable, though distant. Knobs
rose here; there a flat spread. Mountains frowned in the distance, but
so far away that they seemed like papier-mache shapes towering i