more vivid, of her
fall from the horse and what the consequences might have been. It was
a miraculous escape, due to no management of hers. Suppose she had
been disabled!--and in such a place! What a thought! She became
frightened at what was past. She had not really thought of it before;
and now that she did, her imagination was thrown wide open to the
future, and she looked into the possibilities ahead of her. A cow, she
recalled, has been known to attack even a horse and rider. And these
wild range cattle; how might they take the presence of a woman, never
having seen one before? There were thousands of them wandering about
this big place, with horns that spread like the reach of a man's arms.
Her only recourse was to wish she were a man. This was a favorite wish
of hers, indulged in upon those occasions when she discovered that she
had been a "silly coward" or a "perfect fool." After all, she
considered, a woman is n't much loss.

"And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he
said. Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in
all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed. . . .
But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of
salt." It was an old Sunday-school lesson. And Janet had to think
something.

CHAPTER II

While Janet was determinedly putting her foot down on pain and keeping
up the light of faith on the distant sky-line, another and quite
separate horizon was witnessing a little incident of its own. On a
spot on the prairie which was no more a particular place than any other
part of it, a lamb was born. The two occupants of those parts, a man
and a dog (not to mention a flock of sheep), were soon at the spot
where it lay, its small body marking down in white the beginning of the
Season. Nature had thus dropped her card announcing that lambing-time
was now here; and so the little white form in the grass, meaning so
much, claimed all the attention due to an important message--albeit the
message was delivered with somewhat the carelessness of a handbill.
The man stooped over and looked straight down with an expression at
once pleased and perplexed. As coming troubles cast their shadows
before, this little memento, coming on ahead of a gay and giddy throng,
raised visions of troublous and erratic times. The dog, a genteel,
white-ruffed collie, sat down and viewed the infant with a fine look of
high-browed