The stage-agent called her "Miss McBride," and with exaggerated courtesy explained that travel was heavy, and that he had not known that she was intending to go. One of the men, a slender young fellow, moved to the middle of the seat, and politely said, "You can sit on the outside, madam." She clambered in with doleful clamor. "Well, I never rode in one of these pesky things before, and if you git me safe down to the Fork I'll promise never to jump the brute another time." A chuckle went 'round the car; but it soon died out, for the new-comer scarcely left off talking for the next three hours, and Virginia was very glad she had not claimed acquaintanceship. As they whirled madly down the valley the girl was astonished at the transformation in the hot, dry land. Wire fences ran here and there, enclosing fields of alfalfa and wheat where once only the sage-brush and the grease-wood grew. Painted farm-houses shone on the banks of the creeks, and irrigating ditches flashed across the road with an air of business and decision. For the first half-hour it seemed as if the dominion of the cattle-man had ended, but as the swift car drew away from the valley of the Bear and climbed the divide toward the north, the free range was disclosed, with few changes, save in the cattle, which were all of the harmless or hornless variety, appearing tame and spiritless in comparison with the old-time half-wild broad-horn breeds. No horsemen were abroad, and nothing was heard but the whirr of the motor and the steady flow of the garrulous woman behind. Not till the machine was descending the long divide to the west did a single cowboy come into view to remind the girl of the heroic past, and this one but a symbol--a figure of speech. Leaning forward upon his reeling, foaming steed, he spurred along the road as if pursued, casting backward apprehensive glances, as if in the brassy eyes of the car he read his doom--the doom of all his kind. Some vague perception of this symbolism came into Virginia's thought as she watched the swift and tireless wheels swallow the shortening distance between the heels of the flying pony and the gilded seat in which she sat. Vain was the attempt to outride progress. The rider pulled out, and as they passed him the girl found still greater significance in the fact that he was one of her father's old-time cowboys--a grizzled, middle-aged, light-weight centaur whom she would not have recognized had not the driver called him by his quaint well-known nickname. Soon afterward the motor overhauled and passed the battered stage lumbering along, bereft of its passengers, sunk to the level of carrying the baggage for its contemptuous aristocratic supplanter; and as Lee Virginia looked up at the driver, she caught the glance of a simple-minded farm-boy looking down at her. Tom Quentan no longer guided the plunging, reeling broncos on their swift and perilous way--he had sturdily declined to "play second fiddle to a kerosene tank."