With all her woman heart Kitty had fought against these comparisons--and
continued to make them. Everything in her nature that belonged to
Granite Mountain--that was, in short, the product of that land--answered
to Phil's call, as instinctively as the life of that land calls and
answers Its mating calls. Everything that she had acquired in those
three years of a more advanced civilization denied and repulsed him. And
now her meeting with Patches had stirred the warring forces to renewed
activity, and in the distracting turmoil of her thoughts she found
herself hating the land she loved, loathing the life that appealed to
her with such insistent power, despising those whom she so dearly
esteemed and honored, and denying the affection of which she was proud
with a true woman's tender pride.

Kitty was aroused from her absorption by the shrill boyish yells of her
two younger brothers, who, catching sight of their sister from the top
of one of the low hills that edge the meadow bottom lands, were charging
recklessly down upon her.

As the clatter and rumble of those eight flying hoofs drew nearer and
nearer, Midnight, too, "came alive," as the cowboys say, and tossed his
head and pranced with eager impatience.

"Where in the world have you been all the afternoon?" demanded Jimmy,
with twelve-year-old authority, as his pony slid to a halt within a foot
or two of his sister's horse.

And, "We wanted you to go with us, to see our coyote traps," reproved
Conny--two years younger than his brother--as his pinto executed a like
maneuver on the other side of the excited Midnight.