shrug his shoulders and roll another cigarette; above all she could see
Lew Hervey smile with a suppressed wisdom. Both of them had, from the
first, not only disapproved of the long price of the Coles horses, but
of their long legs as well and their "damned high heads." She had kept
telling herself fiercely that before long, when the mares were used to
mountain ways and trails, she would ride one of them against the pick of
Hervey's saddle ponies and at the end of a day he would know how much
blood counts in horse flesh! But if that chance were lost to her with
the mares themselves--she did not know where she could find the courage
to go back and face the people at the ranch. Meantime the dawn grew
slowly in the east but even when the mountains were huge and black
against flaming colors of the horizon sky, there was no breaking of
Marianne's gloom. Now and then, hopelessly, she raised her field glasses
and swept a segment of the compass. But it was an automatic act, and her
own forecast of failure obscured her vision, until at last,
saddle-racked, trembling with weariness and grief, she stopped the mare.
She was beaten!

She had turned the bay towards the home-trail when something
subconsciously noted made her glance over her shoulder. And she saw
them! She needed no glass to bring them close. Those six small forms
moving over the distant hill could be nothing else, but if she doubted,
all room for doubt was instantly removed, for in a moment a group of
horsemen passed raggedly over the same crest. Hervey had found them,
after all! Tears of relief and astonishment streamed down her face. God
bless Lew Hervey for this good work!

Even the bay seemed to recover her spirit at the sight. She had picked
up her head before she felt the rein of the mistress and now she
answered the first word by swinging into a brisk gallop that overhauled