oman who was all the world to him. Even the dog, leaping beside
them as they loped, ranging when the pinto and the bay broke to a
breathing walk, belonged in that picture. It was, he told himself, as if
a boy had long cherished an illustration seen in a book and, suddenly,
the beloved picture had become real and he a part of it.

This was Molly, the girl, who had sworn when she told them of her
father's death. He could recall the tone of the words at will.

"The damned road jest slid out from under. He didn't have a
hell-chance!"

Molly, who had put arms about his neck and kissed him good-by when she
went to school--how long ago that seemed--and said, "Sandy, I don't want
to go, but I'll be game."

Game! Sandy looked at the supple strength of her, so subtly knit in
curves of graciousness, alert and upright in the new saddle, Panama hat
in one hand, the better to get the wind full in her face, her cheeks
flushed with the caress of it, the thick brown braids fluffing here and
there;--she was the essence of gameness. He had quoted _Lasca_ to her
once--a line or two. More came to him now.

To ride with me and forever ride,
From San Saba's shore to Valacca's tide.

Molly, who had told him, the first time the woman-look had come into her
eyes, "Yo're sure a white man. I'll git even with you some time if I
work the bones of my fingers through the flesh fo' you. Thanks don't
'mount to a damn 'thout somethin' back of them 'em. I'll come through."

That Molly, and yet another Molly, swiftly maturing, with all life
opening up before her to wider horizons than would have been hers if she
had stayed back west.

I want free life and I want free air,
And I sigh for the canter after the cattle,
The crack of whips like shots in battle,
The melee of horns and hoofs and heads.

Pronto's hoofs beat out the cantering rhythm of the poem.

That wars and wrangles and scatters and spreads,
The green beneath and the blue above,
And dash and danger and life and----

He had stopped the quotation there before. Now he finished the stanza,

----and life and love
And Lasca!

Only it was Molly! The knowledge swept over Sandy and left him tingling.
Love came to him, the first, clean white flame of first love, burning
like a lamp in the heart of a man. It was for this, he knew, that he had
been woman-shy, that he had cherished his own thought of womanhood as
something so rare a thought mig