Richmond to Augusta; but John Wesley had made many
such rides in the Odyssey of his wonder years. Some of them had been
made in haste. But there was no haste now. Sam Bass, his corn-fed
sorrel, was hardly less sleek and sturdy than at the start, though
a third of the way was behind him. Pringle rode by easy stages, and
where he found himself pleased, there he tarried for a space.

With another friendly nod to the northward hills that marked a day of
his past, Pringle turned his eyes to the westlands, outspread and vast
before him. To his right the desert stretched away, a mighty plain
dotted with low hills, rimmed with a curving, jagged range. Beyond
that range was a nothingness, a hiatus that marked the sunken valley
of the Rio Grande; beyond that, a headlong infinity of unknown ranges,
tier on tier, yellow or brown or blue; broken, tumbled, huddled,
scattered, with gulfs between to tell of unseen plains and hidden
happy valleys--altogether giving an impression of rushing toward him,
resistless, like the waves of a stormy sea.

At his feet the plain broke away sharply, in a series of steplike
sandy benches, to where the Rio Grande bore quartering across the
desert, turning to the Mexican sea; the Mesilla Valley here, a slender
ribbon of mossy green, broidered with loops of flashing river--a
ribbon six miles by forty, orchard, woodland, and green field, greener
for the desolate gray desert beyond and the yellow hills of sand
edging the valley floor. Below him Las Uvas, chief town of the valley,
lay basking in the sun, tiny square and street bordered with greenery:
its domino houses white-walled in the sun, with larger splashes of red
from courthouse or church or school.

Far on the westering desert, beyond the valley, Pringle saw a white
feather of smoke from a toiling train; beyond that a twisting gap in
the blue of the westmost range.

"That's our road." He lifted his bridle rein. "Amble along, Sam!"

To that amble he crooned to himself, pleasantly, half-dreamily--as if
he voiced indirectly some inner thought--quaint snatches of old song:

_"She came to the gate and she peeped in--
Grass and the weeds up to her chin;
Said, 'A rake and a hoe and a fantail plow
Would suit you better than a wife just now.'"_

And again:

_"Schooldays are over now,
Lost all our bliss;
But love remembers yet
Quarrel and kiss.
Still, as in days of yore----"_

Then, after a long silence,