Virginia's approval somehow made the mid-day heat less
intense, and the two miles to the quaking-asps less long. It was good to
reach them, and to lie at full length on the cool ground before drinking
from the spring a few steps away. Pedro and Siwash were grateful, too, as
they cropped the sweet, moist grass. A half hour here would sustain them
against the three miles of sagebrush beyond.

Virginia and Vivian lay flat on their backs with their arms straight above
their heads and rested, as they had been taught to do at St. Helen's.
Above them the interlaced branches of the quaking-asps shut out the sun.
The air was still with that strange stillness which sometimes comes before
a storm. Even the ever-active leaves of the quaking-asps moved not at
all.

"It's the stillest place I ever knew," said Vivian, as she reached for a
cookie. "How far is it to the nearest house?"

Virginia considered.

"Six miles," she said. "No, there's a homesteader's cabin nearer. That's
about four, I guess, but Michner's, the cattle ranch, is six. We always
call them the nearest neighbors from here. It is still, isn't it?"

"Awfully!" returned Vivian.

Their words were hardly finished when the sound of hoofs broke the
stillness. Pedro and Siwash snorted. Virginia and Vivian sat up
quickly--one interested, the other alarmed. Some one was coming along the
rough trail through the sagebrush. Some one was very near! They peered
through the quaking-asps. The some one was a lone cowboy riding a buckskin
horse. He was leaning forward in his saddle and clutching the horn. His
face, almost covered by the big hat he wore, was close to the black mane
of the sturdy little buckskin.

From their shelter they watched him draw near with beating hearts. There
was something strange about him--strange as the stillness. They could not
see that he was guiding the horse, who apparently knew not only the way,
but her mission as well. She came straight toward the shady thicket and
stopped beneath the trees a few rods away from the two anxious spectators.
Her rider, conscious perhaps from the halt that he had reached his
destination, loosened his hold upon the saddle-horn, swung himself with a
mighty effort from the saddle, and fell upon the ground, his hat all
unnoticed falling from his head.

The buckskin was apparently worried. She sniffed the air dubiously,
snorted an anxious greeting to Pedro and Siwash, and moved to one side,
lest by mistake she should t