Unconsciously she brought her quirt down sharply, and her horse, glad of the chance to stretch his legs after several days in the stall, bounded forward and taking the bit in his teeth shot past the little cluster of stores and saloons, past the straggling row of houses and headed out on the trail that wound in and out among the cottonwood clumps of the valley.  At first, the girl tried vainly to check the pace, but as the animal settled to a steady run a spirit of wild exhilaration took possession of her—­the feel of the horse bounding beneath her, the muffled thud of his hoofs in the soft sand of the trail, the alternating patches of moonlight and shadow, and the keen tang of the night air—­all seemed calling her, urging her on.

At the point where the trail rose abruptly in its ascent to the bench, the horse slackened his pace and she brought him to a stand, and for the first time since she left the town, realized she was not alone.  The realization gave her a momentary start, as Purdy reined in close beside her; but a glance into the man’s face reassured her.

“Oh, isn’t it just grand!  I feel as if I could ride on, and on, and on.”

The man nodded and pointed upward where the surface of the bench cut the sky-line sharply.

“Yes, mom,” he answered respectfully.  “If yeh’d admire to, we c’n foller the trail to the top an’ ride a ways along the rim of the bench.  If you like scenes, that ort to be worth while lookin’ at.  The dance won’t git a-goin’ good fer an hour yet ’til the folks gits het up to it.”

For a moment Alice hesitated.  The romance of the night was upon her.  Every nerve tingled, with the feel of the wild.  Her glance wandered from the rim of the bench to the cowboy, a picturesque figure as he sat easily in his saddle, a figure toned by the soft touch of the moonlight to an intrinsic symbolism of vast open spaces.

Something warned her to go back, but—­what harm could there be in just riding to the top?  Only for a moment—­a moment in which she could feast her eyes upon the widespread panorama of moonlit wonder—­and then, they would be in the little town again before the dance was in full swing.  In her mind’s eye she saw Endicott’s disapproving frown, and with a tightening of the lips she started her horse up the hill and the cowboy drew in beside her, the soft brim of his Stetson concealing the glance of triumph that flashed from his eyes.

The trail slanted upward through a narrow coulee that reached the bench level a half-mile back from the valley.  As the two came out into the open the girl once more reined her horse to a standstill.  Before her, far away across the moonlit plain the Bear Paws loomed in mysterious grandeur.  The clean-cut outline of Miles Butte, standing apart from the main range, might have been an Egyptian pyramid rising abruptly from the desert.  From the very centre of the sea of peaks the snow-capped summit of Big Baldy towered high above Tiger Ridge, and Saw Tooth projected its serried crown until it seemed to merge into the Little Rockies which rose indistinct out of the dim beyond.