their
buckboards, waved good-bye, and set their faces to the south.

The sun shone as it knows how in Dakota. The great pine-clad hills were
purple in the lovely morning haze as the little party left Deadwood that
day on the buffalo trail for Cedar Mountain. The doctor drove first in
his buckboard, not without misgivings, for the good horse had had little
rest since that forty-five mile drive. Next came the horseman on the
gold-red horse that men turned to look after. Last, the prairie
buckboard of the house of Collins with Aunt Anna driving and Belle at
her side.

The prairie larks sang from low perches or soared a little way in the
air to tell the world how glad they were on that bright summer morning.
The splendour of the hills was on all things, and Jim on Blazing Star
was filled with the glad tonic. For five miles they ambled along, and
when the doctor stopped at a watering place--he had been told to stop
there--the others caught up with him. Hereupon there was a readjustment,
and their next going found the Collins rig leading with Blazing Star
behind, and Belle with Hartigan in the second buckboard.

That was a drive of much consequence to two of the party. In that second
buckboard the fates laid plans, spun yarns, and rearranged many things.
Hartigan opened his heart and life. He told of his mother, of his happy
childhood; of his losses; of his flat, stale, unprofitable boyhood; of
Bill Kenna and his "word as a man"; of his own vow of abstinence, kept
unbroken till he was eighteen. He gave it all with the joyous side alone
in view, and when a pathetic incident intruded, the pathos was in the
things, not in the words of the narrator. The man had a power of
expression that would have made a great journalist. His talk was one
continuous entertainment, and lasted unbroken to the half-way house,
where they were to stay an hour for rest and food.

How sweet it is to tell one's history to a woman who takes in every word
as of large importance! How pleasant it is to confess to a keen and
sympathetic hearer. The twenty-five miles passed far too soon. It was
short, but long enough for large foundations to be laid.

Belle was only twenty-two, but hers was a wise head. Hartigan had spoken
freely about himself and thus had conferred in some large sort a right
to advise. She had deliberately constructed a new mood for his thoughts,
so that the horrors of the Bylow cabin were forgotten. The questions now
for him and for he