never dawned. But there was scant room for sadness in her present
mood. Tomorrow? She let herself be afraid for an instant, to tremble
in delicious mock-terror, because there was nothing for her to fear now
in the whole wide world.

She grew pensive at times; at times in an abandon of gaiety she
chattered back at a quarrelsome squirrel in the thicket. She could
rest later; and if she could not go to him immediately, at least every
step the horse took was bringing them, for a little while, closer
together. And her to-morrow was only one twilight and one dawn away;
her to-morrow would be his, as utterly as was she herself. Dusk came,
and regretfully she told herself that she must be turning back home.
Two rifle shots, sharp and startlingly close, whipped through the quiet
of that lazy afternoon, but they meant nothing to her. She had reached
the height of land, where he had found her the day her roan mare
strayed off while she sat mooning on a log; she was holding out both
arms toward the spot where the valley of Thirty-Mile must lie, when a
team of heavy horses broke around a turn in the road, slowed to a trot
at the sight of her, and came to an abrupt standstill. When the girl
rode nearer to them, merely surprised and curious at first, they
snorted and showed the whites of their eyes and shied back nervously.

Something chill clutched at Barbara's heart while she spoke
pre-emptorily to Ragtime, who was dancing in sympathetic panic. There
was nothing to tell her, but she knew that these were Big Louie's
horses. And Big Louie was a dreamy incompetent--he had left them for a
moment, that was all, and they had become frightened and bolted. But
Big Louie never neglected his team . . . they were not wet . . . they
had not been running far. And their fright became less when she
dismounted and approached them, soothing them with her voice until they
let her touch their sleek sides, without rearing away.

Dusk had come and gone, for it was growing dark. Uncertain, more and
more unnerved as she stood and gazed at the forbidding, black-shadowed
ridges beyond her, the girl had to fight suddenly against an impulse to
turn and race back to the lower country and Morrison and home. Even
then the rifle shots meant nothing to her--and pride would not let her
run. She remounted and rode on a rod or two, and stopped to look back
at the team which was watching her; she pressed on and rounded the
curve. Ragtime reared and s