mandolin and began
Kennedy's favorite, "Ultimo Amor." It was now three o'clock in the
afternoon, the hottest hour in the day. The narrow shelf of shadow had
widened until the floor of the amphitheater was marked off in two
halves, one glittering yellow, and one purple. The little boys had come
back and were making a robbers' cave to enact the bold deeds of Pedro
the bandit. Johnny, stretched gracefully on the sand, passed from
"Ultimo Amor" to "Fluvia de Oro," and then to "Noches de Algeria,"
playing languidly.

Every one was busy with his own thoughts. Mrs. Tellamantez was thinking
of the square in the little town in which she was born; of the white
church steps, with people genuflecting as they passed, and the
round-topped acacia trees, and the band playing in the plaza. Ray
Kennedy was thinking of the future, dreaming the large Western dream of
easy money, of a fortune kicked up somewhere in the hills,--an oil well,
a gold mine, a ledge of copper. He always told himself, when he accepted
a cigar from a newly married railroad man, that he knew enough not to
marry until he had found his ideal, and could keep her like a queen. He
believed that in the yellow head over there in the sand he had found his
ideal, and that by the time she was old enough to marry, he would be
able to keep her like a queen. He would kick it up from somewhere, when
he got loose from the railroad.

Thea, stirred by tales of adventure, of the Grand Canyon and Death
Valley, was recalling a great adventure of her own. Early in the summer
her father had been invited to conduct a reunion of old frontiersmen, up
in Wyoming, near Laramie, and he took Thea along with him to play the
organ and sing patriotic songs. There they stayed at the house of an old
ranchman who told them about a ridge up in the hills called Laramie
Plain, where the wagon-trails of the Forty-niners and the Mormons were
still visible. The old man even volunteered to take Mr. Kronborg up into
the hills to see this place, though it was a very long drive to make in
one day. Thea had begged frantically to go along, and the old rancher,
flattered by her rapt attention to his stories, had interceded for her.

They set out from Laramie before daylight, behind a strong team of
mules. All the way there was much talk of the Forty-niners. The old
rancher had been a teamster in a freight train that used to crawl back
and forth across the plains between Omaha and Cherry Creek, as Denver
was th