A dragon-fly flashed out from the other bank and hung above the water in all its burnished bravery, turning, wheeling, flickering, darting here and there, a dazzle of blue-black polish on body and wing. Hilda welcomed it as an illustration. She had all along been afraid that her eloquence alone might fall short of convincing the material-minded Burch. Here was something concrete, visible, with which to back up her assurances, and she cried out softly: “It looks just like that, Burchie, only bigger. It’s as shiny as that, and it can go ’most as quick; but it’ll go the way Uncle Hank wants it to.” “It’ll go the way I want it to,” said Burch solemnly, watching the darting brightness. “I’ll drive it—when we get it.” He nodded his flaxen head toward the funny little green mound that stood in the side yard, matted with woodbine in the summer and wearing a peaked cap of snow of winters. “I’ll drive right up on top of the mountain, and down on the other side,” he announced. Hilda surveyed the mound doubtfully; it was as sharp and definite as an upturned cup. “Oh, no, brother,” she demurred. Then as she saw protest in his face, she hastened to modify, “Well, not right at first. You’d upset, I’m afraid. Let’s just drive round on the level for a good while; then, if Uncle Hank says you may, you can go over the mountain.” Day after day, for a whole week, their play was all concerned with the new carriage. It was present, with a wonderful reality, down behind the corral on sunny afternoons, out along the road from school, and beside the _asequia_. When the wonderful morning of the contest came at last, the ancient crippled ambulance was, in Uncle Hank’s phrase, “toggled up,” a pair of good ponies put to it, and the old man drove his household over the eighteen miles of open plain to Dawn. Rose Marie—a creature of infinite fineness, quick intuition, and warm, responsive sympathies, a pal to share a jest or a triumph with, and one who could hold her tongue till the stars fell, in short, the perfect friend, the companion genial yet reticent, discreet without austerity—Rose Marie sat between Hilda and Burchie. Ahead, Shorty, Jeff, Buster, Missou’, old Snake Thompson, and the other Three Sorrows cowpunchers rode in a brave squad, from which came the sounds of jingling spurs, creaking saddles, and that deep, satisfying music of big bass voices. It was a customary caravan. Sometimes as Hilda rode on, she was a Persian princess in her palanquin, with her retinue of slaves; or a prisoner, torn from some stately and glittering home, her cruel captors galloping beside, exchanging callous jest and laughter across her delicious, silken-robed despair. Aunt Val, on the seat by her, even Uncle Hank in front driving, never guessed what a world of her own, splendid, terrifying, marvelous, the child was riding through. Only Rose Marie might know.