watched him in admiration. He seemed to be loosely fitted to the
saddle, moving with the horse.

"I suppose that's a cowboy's style. It pleases me," she said.
"How different from the seat of Eastern riders!"

Then Madeline sat upon the porch and fell to interested
observation of her surrounding. Near at hand it was decidedly
not prepossessing. The street was deep in dust, and the cool
wind whipped up little puffs. The houses along this street were
all low, square, flat-roofed structures made of some kind of red
cement. It occurred to her suddenly that this building-material
must be the adobe she had read about. There was no person in
sight. The long street appeared to have no end, though the line
of houses did not extend far. Once she heard a horse trotting at
some distance, and several times the ringing of a locomotive
bell. Where were the mountains, wondered Madeline. Soon low
over the house-roofs she saw a dim, dark-blue, rugged outline.
It seemed to charm her eyes and fix her gaze. She knew the
Adirondacks, she had seen the Alps from the summit of Mont Blanc,
and had stood under the great black, white-tipped shadow of the
Himalayas. But they had not drawn her as these remote Rockies.
This dim horizon line boldly cutting the blue sky fascinated her.
Florence Kingsley's expression "beckoning mountains" returned to
Madeline. She could not see or feel so much as that. Her
impression was rather that these mountains were aloof,
unattainable, that if approached they would recede or vanish like
the desert mirage.

Madeline went to her room, intending to rest awhile, and she fell