eading matter for Marthy.
Things were going to be different. He wondered whether a little piano
could be placed in one of the rooms of the ranch house without the
family having to move out of doors.

In nowise calculated to allay his self-reproach was the thought that
Marthy and Randy would have to pass the night alone. In spite of their
bickerings, when night came Marthy was wont to dismiss her fears of the
country, and rest her head upon Sam's strong arm with a sigh of
peaceful content and dependence. And were her fears so groundless? Sam
thought of roving, marauding Mexicans, of stealthy cougars that
sometimes invaded the ranches, of rattlesnakes, centipedes, and a dozen
possible dangers. Marthy would be frantic with fear. Randy would cry,
and call for dada to come.

Still the interminable succession of stretches of brush, cactus, and
mesquite. Hollow after hollow, slope after slope--all exactly
alike--all familiar by constant repetition, and yet all strange and
new. If he could only arrive _somewhere_.

The straight line is Art. Nature moves in circles. A straightforward
man is more an artificial product than a diplomatist is. Men lost in
the snow travel in exact circles until they sink, exhausted, as their
footprints have attested. Also, travellers in philosophy and other
mental processes frequently wind up at their starting-point.

It was when Sam Webber was fullest of contrition and good resolves that
Mexico, with a heavy sigh, subsided from his regular, brisk trot into a
slow complacent walk. They were winding up an easy slope covered with
brush ten or twelve feet high.

"I say now, Mex," demurred Sam, "this here won't do. I know you're
plumb tired out, but we got ter git along. Oh, Lordy, ain't there no
mo' houses in the world!" He gave Mexico a smart kick with his heels.

Mexico gave a protesting grunt as if to say: "What's the use of that,
now we're so near?" He quickened his gait into a languid trot.
Rounding a great clump of black chaparral he stopped short. Sam
dropped the bridle reins and sat, looking into the back door of his own
house, not ten yards away.

Marthy, serene and comfortable, sat in her rocking-chair before the
door in the shade of the house, with her feet resting luxuriously upon
the steps. Randy, who was playing with a pair of spurs on the ground,
looked up for a moment at his father and went on spinning the rowels
and singing a little song. Marthy turned her hea