"Now, where's your paper?" Vashti asked. "You go on toward the bridge," she continued, when Harry had told her where to find the bill of sale. "I'll come across the scab land and meet you." With envy and admiration and gratitude in her heart Harry watched the small figure in red calico speed away across the sagebrush. "If I could only go like that!" she thought with a sigh. "Well, I guess I'm not too old to learn, and if Vashti will teach me, maybe I can teach her something she'd like to know." She had scarcely five minutes to wait at the bridge before Vashti came up with the precious paper. "You'll have to jack them there plugs up some if you're goin' to make it," the little girl remarked. "Wait. I'll get you a willer." Slipping off her horse, she went down the bank of the river. In a minute she returned with a long, stout willow wand. "'Tain't so good as a blacksnake, but it'll make 'em step along some." "Thank you, Vashti. If I do get there, it will be entirely owing to you!" Harry's words made the small girl smile with pleasure. "It's just as Bobs said," Harry confessed to herself. "They're as kind-hearted and friendly as can be when you once know them, and all the 'education' in the world isn't as valuable out here as what they know." As she drove along she kept thinking about the Robinsons, and of her own life on the ranch, and of Rob's present trouble. She was so busy with her thoughts that she did not notice the road, which meandered across the prairies without even a tree or a butte for landmark. This end of the prairie had never been laid off in ranches; it was too rough and too much broken by waves of lava that had at one time poured down through the valley. For miles there was no sign of human existence, no fence, no house, no cattle. The girl did not realize that she ought to be observing all the details that, in the desert, take the place of the signposts of civilized regions. She had grown drowsy with the monotony of the ride, but as the time passed, she glanced at the sun. It was getting low, and the pillar butte had not yet come into view. Feeling sure that she would see it after the next turn, she urged the horses to a trot; then suddenly she drew a sharp breath of dismay. The road had dipped into a small meadow sunk among the buttes, and ended. Harry pulled up the team and stared. Before her lay a long wooden platform. Tent pegs still stood in the ground, which was littered with camp leavings and piles of refuse wool. It was a shearing floor. She had taken the wrong road. She sat still a moment, wondering what she had better do. She had no idea how far past the right turn she had come. The best plan would be to feed and water the horses here and then turn back. She ate her bread and bacon and drank from the canvas bag slung beneath the wagon; she envied 'Thello, who had promptly laid himself down in the shallow stream that oozed from the meadow.