This conversation occurred just after they left the house on this
windy morning, with a red sun coming up behind them "as big as a
cartwheel," Bess announced. The level rays of the sun shot far, far
across the plains and gilded the line of buttes and mesas Rhoda had
told them so much about while back at Lakeview Hall.

"Those are not the Blue Buttes this morning, Rhoda," declared Nan.
"They are golden."

Rhoda's eyes swept the frontage of the eminences. She carried a
pair of glasses in a case slung from her shoulder. Suddenly she
seized these, uncased them, and clapped them to her eyes.

"Hi, cap'n!" cried Bess, "what do you spy?"

"See that flash between those two hills?" said Rhoda, reining in
her mount.

They gathered about her, looking where she aimed the glasses.
Walter exclaimed:

"I see the flash! It isn't the sun shining on guns, is it?"

"Nonsense!" cried Nan Sherwood.

"No-o," said Rhoda. "People don't carry guns that way around here.
Besides, the only part of a gun that the sun would flash on would
be the bayonet; and we don't carry army rifles in this country,"
and she laughed.