conductor on a freight train, his run being from Moonstone
to Denver. Ray was a big fellow, with a square, open
American face, a rock chin, and features that one would
never happen to remember. He was an aggressive idealist,
a freethinker, and, like most railroad men, deeply senti-
mental. Thea liked him for reasons that had to do with
the adventurous life he had led in Mexico and the South-
west, rather than for anything very personal. She liked
him, too, because he was the only one of her friends who
ever took her to the sand hills. The sand hills were a con-
stant tantalization; she loved them better than anything
near Moonstone, and yet she could so seldom get to them.
The first dunes were accessible enough; they were only a
few miles beyond the Kohlers', and she could run out there
any day when she could do her practicing in the morning
and get Thor off her hands for an afternoon. But the real
hills--the Turquoise Hills, the Mexicans called them--
were ten good miles away, and one reached them by a
heavy, sandy road. Dr. Archie sometimes took Thea on
his long drives, but as nobody lived in the sand hills, he
never had calls to make in that direction. Ray Kennedy
was her only hope of getting there.

This summer Thea had not been to the hills once, though
Ray had planned several Sunday expeditions. Once Thor
was sick, and once the organist in her father's church was
away and Thea had to play the organ for the three Sunday