The waters, as I watched them, were all running south toward that vague,
down-stream world shut off by trees at a bend of the course. I waited a
long time there for the current to shift to the north, wondering
meanwhile about those level-topped forests, and what I might see beyond
them if I were sitting on their flat crests. And, as I wondered, the
first dim sense of being _shut in_ came filtering through my childish
consciousness. I could not cross the river. Big as my playground had
always been, I had never been out of sight of the fort's flagstaff
up-stream, nor down-stream. The wooded ravines blocked me on the
southwest. What lay beyond these limits I had tried to picture again and
again. I had been a dreamer all of my short life, and this new feeling
of being shut in, held back, from something slipped upon me easily.

As I sat on the bluff in the April sunshine, I turned my face toward
the west and stretched out my chubby arms for larger freedom. I wanted
to _see the open level places_, wanted till it hurt me. I could cry
easily enough for some things. I could not cry for this. It was too deep
for tears to reach. Moreover, this new longing seemed to drop down on me
suddenly and overwhelm me, until I felt almost as if I were caught in a
net.

As I stared with half-seeing eyes toward the wooded ravines beyond the
fort, suddenly through the budding branches I caught sight of a horseman
riding down a half-marked trail into a deep hollow. Horsemen were common
enough to forget in a moment, but when this one reappeared on the hither
side of the ravine, I saw that the rider's face was very dark, that his
dress, from the sombrero to the spurred heel, was Mexican, and that he
was heavily armed, even for a plainsman. When he reached the top of the
bluff he made straight across the square toward my uncle Esmond
Clarenden's little storehouse, and I lost sight of him.