his own
tactfulness and made polite assurances of aid should it become possible.

"I'd be mightily obliged," said his new-found friend. "Seems like I lose
my nerve every time I try to say a word to that girl. Now, I plum forgot
to ast you which way you was goin'. Do you want a team?"

"Thank you," said Franklin, "but I hardly think so. I want to find my
friend Colonel Battersleigh, and I understand he lives not very far away."

"Oh, you mean old Batty. Yes, he lives just out south a little
ways--Section No. 9, southeast quarter. I suppose you could walk."

"I believe I will walk, if you don't mind," said Franklin. "It seems
very pleasant, and I am tired of riding."

"All right, so long," said Sam. "Don't you forgit what I told you about
that Nora girl."

Franklin passed on in the direction which had been pointed out to him,
looking about him at the strange, new country, in which he felt the
proprietorship of early discovery. He drew in deep breaths of an air
delightfully fresh, squaring his shoulders and throwing up his head
instinctively as he strode forward. The sky was faultlessly clear. The
prospect all about him, devoid as it was of variety, was none the less
abundantly filling to the eye. Far as the eye could reach rolled an
illimitable, tawny sea. The short, harsh grass near at hand he
discovered to be dotted here and there with small, gay flowers. Back of
him, as he turned his head, he saw a square of vivid green, which water
had created as a garden spot of grass and flowers at the stone hotel. He
did not find this green of civilization more consoling or inspiring than
the natural colour of the wild land that lay before him. For the first
time in his life he looked upon the great Plains, and for the first time
felt their fascination. There came to him a subtle, strange
exhilaration. A sensation of confidence, of certainty, arose in his
heart. He trod as a conqueror upon a land new taken. All the earth
seemed happy and care-free. A meadow lark was singing shrilly high up in
the air; another lark answered, clanking contentedly from the grass,
whence in the bright air its yellow breast showed brilliantly.

As Franklin was walking on, busy with the impressions of his new world,
he became conscious of rapid hoof-beats coming up behind him, and turned
to see a horseman careering across the open in his direction, with no
apparent object in view beyond that of making all the noise possible to