"Isn't it wonderful?" breathed the girl. "Why do people stay cooped up
in the cities, when out here there is--this?" Endicott's eyes met
hers, and in their depths she perceived a newly awakened fire. She was
conscious of a strange glow at her heart--a mighty gladness welled up
within her, permeating her whole being. "He has awakened," her brain
repeated over and over again, "he has----"

The voice of the Texan fell upon her ears softly as from a distance,
and she turned her eyes to the boyish faced cow-puncher who viewed life
lightly and who, she had learned, was the thorough master of his
wilderness, and very much a man.

"I love it too," he was saying. "This bad land best of all. What with
the sheep, an' the nesters, the range country must go. But barbed-wire
can never change this," his arm swept the vast plain before him. "I
suppose God foreseen what the country was comin' to," he speculated,
"an' just naturally stuck up His 'keep off' sign on places here an'
there--the Sahara Desert, an' Death Valley, an' the bad lands. He
wanted somethin' left like He made it. Yonder's the Little Rockies,
an' them big black buttes to the south are the Judith, an' you can
see--way beyond the Judith--if you look close--the Big Snowy Mountains.
They're more than a hundred miles away."

The cowboy ceased speaking suddenly. And Alice, following his gaze,
made out far to the north-eastward a moving speck. The Texan crouched
and motioned the others into the shelter of a rock. "Wish I had a pair
of glasses," he muttered, with his eyes on the moving dot.

"What is it?" asked the girl.