e loneliness of the plains
rose up again.

"I'll get Juno and follow the trail till I meet Asher. I can't get lost
where there's nothing but space," she said aloud, as she hurried to the
stable and led out the petted thoroughbred.

Horses are very human creatures, responding not only to the moods of their
masters, but to the conditions that give these moods. The West was no
kinder to the eastern-bred horse than to the eastern-bred man. All day
Juno had plunged about the stable and pawed the hard earth floor in sheer
nervousness. She leaped out of doors now at Virginia's call, as eager for
comfort as a homesick child.

"We'll chase off and meet Asher, darling."

Even the soft voice the mare had heard all her days did not entirely
soothe her. As Virginia mounted the wind flung shut the stable door with a
bang. Juno leaped as from a gunshot, and dashed away up the river to the
northwest. Her rider tried in vain to change her course and quiet her
spirit. The mare only surged madly forward, as if bent on outrunning the
tantalizing, grinding wind. With the sense of freedom, and with the
boundlessness of the plains, some old instinct of the unbridled days of
by-gone generations woke to life and power in her, and with the bit
between her teeth, she swept away in unrestrained speed.

Virginia was a skilled horsewoman, and she had no fear for herself, so she
held the reins and kept her place.

"I can go wherever you can, you foolish Juno," she cried, giving herself
up to the exhilarating ride. "We'll stay together to the end of the race,
and we will get it out of our systems once for all, and come back
'plains-broke.'"

Beyond a westward sweeping curve of the river's course the chase became a
climb up a long slope that grew steeper and steeper, cutting off the view
of the stream. Here Juno's speed slackened, then dropped into a steady
canter, as she listened for a command to turn back.

"We'll go on to the edge of that bluff, lady, now we are here, and see
what is across the river," Virginia said. "Then we will hurry home to
Asher and prairie hay."

When they came at last over a rough shale outcrop to the highest headland,
the river bed lay between its base and a barren waste of sand dunes, with
broad grassy regions beyond them spreading southward. The view from the
bluff's top was magnificent. Virginia held Juno to the place and looked in
wonder at the vast southwest on this strange September afternoon. Across a
reach