looking out into the hazy sunlight which lay warm on hill and coulee.

"I think I'll go up above the grade and make a sketch of the ranch,"
she said to the Countess, and hastily collected her materials.

Down by the creek a "cotton-tail" sprang out of her way and kicked
itself out of sight beneath a bowlder. The Little Doctor stood and
watched till he disappeared, before going on again. Further up the
bluff a striped snake gave her a shivery surprise before he glided
sinuously away under a sagebush. She crossed the grade and climbed
the steep bluff beyond, searching for a comfortable place to work.

A little higher, she took possession of a great, gray bowlder jutting
like a giant table from the gravelly soil. She walked out upon it and
looked down--a sheer drop of ten or twelve feet to the barren, yellow
slope below.

"I suppose it is perfectly solid," she soliloquized and stamped one
stout, little boot, to see if the rock would tremble. If human emotions
are possible to a heart of stone, the rock must have been greatly amused
at the test. It stood firm as the hills around it.

Della sat down and looked below at the house--a doll's house; at the toy
corrals and tiny sheds and stables. Slim, walking down the hill, was a
mere pigmy--a short, waddling insect. At least, to a girl unused to
gazing from a height, each object seemed absurdly small. Flying U
coulee stretched away to the west, with a silver ribbon drawn carelessly
through it with many a twist and loop, fringed with a tender green of
young leaves. Away and beyond stood the Bear Paws, hazily blue, with
splotches of purple shadows.