To the north there was a rise of land, running up in benched gradations to white and barren distant heights; behind them were brown hills. Far away in the blue southwest--Smith said it was more than eighty miles--there stood the mountains with their clean robes of snow, while scattered here and there about the vast plain through which they drove, were buttes of blue shale and red ledges, as symmetrical of side and smooth of top as if they had been raised by the architects of Tenochtitlán for sacrifice to their ugly gods. "Old as Adam," said Smith, pointing to one gray monument whose summit had been pared smooth by the slow knife of some old glacier. The sides of the butte looked almost gay in the morning light in their soft tones of blue and red. "From appearances it might very well be," agreed Agnes. She looked at Smith and smiled. There was the glory of untrammeled space in her clear eyes, a yearning as of the desert-born on the far bounds of home. Smith drove on, his back very straight. "Older," said he with laconic finality after holding his peace for a quarter of a mile. Smith spoke as if he had known both Adam and the butte for a long time, and so was an unquestionable authority. Agnes was not disposed to dispute him, so they lurched on in silence along the dust-cushioned road. "That ain't the one the Indian girl jumped off of, though," said Smith, meditatively. "Isn't it?" She turned to him quickly, ready for a story from the picturesque strangler of bears. Smith was looking between the ears of the off-leader. He volunteered no more. "Well, where is the one she jumped from?" she pressed. "Nowhere," said Smith. "Oh!" she said, a bit disappointed. "Everywhere I've went," said he, "they've got some high place where the Indian girl jumped off of. In Mezoury they've got one, and even in Kansas. They've got one in Minnesota and Illinoy and Idaho, and bend my eyebrows if I know all the places they ain't got 'em! But don't you never let 'em take you in on no such yarns. Them yarns is for suckers." Somehow Agnes felt grateful toward Smith, whose charitable purpose doubtless was to prevent her being taken in. But she was sorry for the fine tradition and hated to give it up. "But _didn't_ one ever jump off a cliff or--anything?" she asked. Smith struck out with a free-arm swing and cracked his whip so loudly that three female heads were at once protruded from the windows below. "What I want to know," said he argumentatively, "is, who seen 'em jump?" "I don't know," she admitted; "but I suppose they found their bodies." "Don't you believe it!" depreciated Smith. "Indian maidens ain't the jumpin' kind. I never seen one of 'em in my day that wouldn't throw down the best feller she ever had for a red umbreller and a dime's worth of stick candy." "I'm sorry for the nice stories your knowledge of the Indian character spoils," she laughed.