; it tasted better than she
would have expected cold hot-bread to do.

Luckily for the work she had taken upon herself, Steve Brown had
planned a route for the day which any one could easily follow. He was
going to graze the sheep along Comanche Creek, downstream, on the
right-hand side; he would bring them back not very wide of the same
course. This arrangement he had made entirely with a view to being
quickly found in case help arrived; he had left a note behind giving
instructions. As this was all very plain sailing, Janet saw that she
would be quite free to come and go, and she had been quick to turn this
arrangement to the lambs' advantage. When she had satisfied the worst
of her hunger she started out again. The consciousness that she could
find him whenever she wished, and was, virtually, in touch with him all
the time, made her task entirely enjoyable.

This time she reached the creek and gave herself over to its guidance.
Comanche Creek, like other prairie streams, had its line of trees which
very plainly belonged to it and not to the prairie. This impression of
foreignness to the region was emphasized by their extending in unbroken
procession from horizon to horizon, as if they were merely crossing the
plains. While the stream hurried on to its congregation of waters, the
trees seemed bound for some distant forest. Quite strictly they kept
to the course; none of them, beech, hickory, live-oak, nor pecan,
encroached beyond the right of way nor seemed ever to have been
forgetful that these were the Plains. It was very much as if they
recognized that trees ought not to grow here. As, indeed, they ought
not. The prairie is itself as much as is the ocean or forest, and it
has no room to spare. Space, like wood and water, must have its own
exclusive regions wherein to exercise its larger and deeper spell.
These were the earthly fastnesses of space; and so preempted. Many
grapevines looped along the route, some of them of ancient growth,
hanging like big ropes from tree to tree; these had the appearance of
keeping a still closer regard to the direction of the stream itself,
their more sinuous wood flowing along in a like spirit and keeping the
waters company. Nowhere so artfully, perhaps, as in a prairie stream,
are eye and ear addressed by the manifold activities of wood and water.
To come across it in the course of a long monotonous journey is as
sudden as falling in love--and very much like it.

C