se and rode westward, toward the big basin.

She kept the house between her and the point where she had seen
Linton--until a turn northward became inevitable; and then she urged
Billy to a faster pace, in an endeavor to cross the wide plain that
reached to the entrance to the basin before Linton could see her.

Many times during the days before the coming of Deveny and Haydon to the
valley she had ridden there; it had been a place in which reigned a
mighty silence which she had loved, which had thrilled her. During those
other days she was in the habit of riding to a point several miles up the
valley--between the little basin where the Star was now and the Rancho
Seco.

The trail led upward in a slow, gradual slope to that point--a rugged
promontory that jutted out from a mesa that rose above the floor of the
valley. The mesa was fringed at the southern edge with stunt oak and
nondescript brush. But there were breaks in the fringe which permitted
her to ride close to the edge of the mesa; and from there she could look
many miles up the valley--and across it, where the solemn hills rimmed
the southern horizon, to a trail--called the South Trail by cattlemen in
the valley, to distinguish it from the main trail leading through the
mighty hollow in which she rode.

When she reached the mesa she headed Billy directly for the break on the
promontory. Dismounting, she stretched her legs to disperse the saddle
weariness; then she found a huge rock which had been the seat from which
she had viewed the wondrous landscape in the past.

The reverent awe with which she had always viewed the valley was as
strong in her today as it had ever been--stronger, in fact, because she
had not seen the place for some time, and because in her heart there now
dwelt a sadness that had not been there in those other days--at least
since her mother had died.

She was high above the floor of the valley; and she could see the main
trail below her weaving around low mounds and sinking into depressions;
disappearing into timber groves, reappearing farther on, disappearing
again, and again reappearing until it grew blurred and indistinct in her
vision.

In the marvelous clarity of the atmosphere this morning every beauteous
feature of the valley was disclosed to her inspection. The early morning
haze had lifted, and the few fleecy clouds that floated in the blue bowl
of sky were motionless, their majestic billows glowing in the sun. She
saw a Mex