Of all her journeyings about Idaho that ride to Ludlum's was the one that Harry remembered most vividly. The start before dawn, the ponies fresh and eager, the morning star ahead, white and dazzling in the east, the familiar road at that unfamiliar hour so strangely beautiful--above all, the realization that this day was to make her actually the owner of a herd--all filled her with a wonderful, exhilarating joy. She and Rob were riding fast, scarcely speaking to each other. They had rounded the foot of the butte that separated Harry's land from the Bianes' and were almost in front of the Biane house when, as they galloped along the fence, Rob's horse leaped and gave a snort of fright. "Take care, there!" Rob called back as he regained his seat. Instinctively Harry reined in and glanced fearfully over her shoulder. There was nothing much to be seen--only the elder Biane loading something into the wagon that stood in front of the door. "I wonder whether Joe was hurt worse than they wanted to say," Rob remarked to Harry, and then called out, "Hi, there, Biane; need any help? Joe all right this morning?" "All right, all right! We need not'ting at all." As Rob halted, the Portuguese started forward and waved his arm with a threatening gesture. "Not'ting is the mattare here! Go on!" "Polite beggar," Rob commented, laughing as they set spurs to their horses and rode on. It was nine o'clock when, after crossing the foothills, they sighted, far to the south, the oasis of shadow that indicated the poplar trees of Ludlum's siding. The railway crosses the Snake River there, full forty miles south of Camas Prairie, in the heart of the sand-and-sagebrush desert. When a new irrigation tract was opened, and a rush of settlers came in the siding began to gather a settlement round itself. Their ranches lay below the big ditch along the base of the foothill rise, and their scattered forties and eighties of alfalfa were the first verdure that the travelers from the hills had seen. As Harry gazed forward along the road winding through the sagebrush toward Ludlum's, she saw in fancy the slow-moving string of cattle that would soon be coming back over that road to her. Her herd! Already she thought of them as hers; for when she had made the second payment in December it would be no time at all until the increase from the herd would pay the rest of the debt. "Things are getting pretty dry already," Rob remarked, as he gazed at the passing country. "If the irrigation water fails these fellows, and it may easy enough, there was so little snow last winter, they won't get much late hay." "Why, I think the crops look fine," Harry answered gayly; "and as for us, we have all the water we need. Our springs were never known to fail, now, were they? We've miles of free range that should last into October, and we can certainly buy all the hay we need down on the flat."