Stella Vorhis and John Wesley, far out on the plain, rode through the pleasant afternoon.  The V H. Ranch was in sight now, huddled low before them; beyond, a cluster of low hills rose from the plain, visible center of a world fresh, eager, and boundless.

The girl’s eye kindled with delight as it sought the far horizons, the misty parapets gleaming up through the golden air; she was one who found dear and beautiful this gray land, silent and ensunned.  She flung up her hand exultingly.

“Isn’t it wonderful, John Wesley?  Do you know what it makes me think of?  This: 

    "’...  Magic casements, opening on the foam
      Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn!’

“Think, John!  This country hasn’t changed a bit since the day Columbus set out from Spain.”

“How true!  Fine old bird, Columbus—­he saw America first.  Great head he showed, too, getting himself named Christopher.  Otherwise you might have said, ’the day Antony discovered Cleopatra’—­or something like that.  Wise old Chris!”

Stella’s eyes narrowed reflectively.

“John Wesley, you’ve been reading!  You never used to know anything about Mark Antony.”

“I cribbed that remark from Billy Beebe and he swiped it from a magazine.  I don’t know much about Mark, even this very yet.  Good old easy Mark!”

“That’s the how of it.  You’ve been absorbing knowledge from those pardners of yours.  Your talk shows it.  You’re changed a lot—­that way.  Every other way you’re the same old Wes!”

“Now, that sounds better!” said Pringle in his most complacent tones.  “I want to talk about myself, always, Stella May Vorhis; we’ve come thirty miles and I’ve heard Christopher Foy, Foy, Foy, all the way!  It’s exasperating!  It’s sickening!”

But Stella was not to be flustered.  She held her head proudly.

“It’s you that have been talking about him.  I told you you’d like him, John Wesley.”

“Yes, you did—­and I do.  He’s a self-starter.  He’s a peppermist.  He’s a regular guy.  It wasn’t only the way he smashed those thugs—­taken by surprise and all—­but that he had judgment enough not to shoot when there was no need for it; that’s what gets me!  And then he went and spoiled it all.”

“How?”

“Hiking on up to the ranch with the Major, without even waking you up.  Why, if it was me, do you s’pose I’d leave another man—­no matter how old and safe he was—­to tell such a story as that his own way and hog all the credit for himself?  That Las Uvas push is a four-flush—­he needn’t stir a peg for them.  No, sir!  I’d have stayed right there till you got ready to come—­and every time I’d narrate that tale about the scrap it would get scarier and scarier.”