g.

"Did you ever see anything so desolate?" one asked.

"I wouldn't live in this country if they gave it to me," said the other.

Ramon turned and looked at them. They were solid, important-looking men,
and having visited upon the country their impressive disapproval, they
opened newspapers and shut it away from their sight. Dull fools, thought
Ramon, who do not know God's country when they see it.

And then he continued to look right over their heads and their newspapers,
for tripping down the aisle all by herself at last, came the girl of his
fruitless choice. His eyes, deep with dreams, met hers. She smiled upon
him, radiantly, blushed a little, and hurried on through the car.

He sat looking after her with a foolish grin on his face. He was pleased
and shaken. So she had noticed him after all. She had been waiting for a
chance, as well as he. And now that it had come, he was getting off the
train in an hour. It was useless to follow her.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} He turned to the window
again.

CHAPTER II

Usually in each generation of a large and long-established family there is
some one individual who stands out from the rest as a leader and as the
most perfect embodiment of the family traditions and characteristics. This
was especially true of the Delcasar family. It was established in this
country in the year 1790 by Don Eusabio Maria Delcasar y Morales, an
officer in the army of the King of Spain, who distinguished himself in the
conquest of New Mexico, and especially in certain campaigns against the
Navajos. As was customary at that time, the King rewarded his faithful
soldier with a grant of land in the new province. This Delcasar estate lay
in the Rio Grande Valley and the surrounding _mesa_ lands. By the
provisions of the King's grant, its dimensions were each the distance that
Don Delcasar could ride in a day. The Don chose good horses and did not
spare them, so that he secured to his family more than a thousand square
miles of land with a strip of rich valley through the middle and a
wilderness of desert and mountain on either side. Much of this
principality was never seen by Don Eusabio, and even the four sons who
divided the estate upon his death had each more land than he could well
use.

The outstanding figure of this second generation was Don Solomon Delcasar,
who was noted for the magnificence of his establishment, and for his
autocratic spirit.

No