“Hope you do,” said McKane, for though he was none too scrupulous where his own interests were concerned, he felt a vague admiration for the game girl working her lonely homestead in her dead father’s place. So, with the crop spreading its four delicate blades to the coaxing sun and the hay knee-deep in the big fenced flat across the river, Nance Allison laid by her labors for a while to rest her body and refresh her soul. “I’ve just got to ride the hills, Mammy,” she said smiling, “got to fish the holes in Blue Stone Cañon, to climb the slopes for a little while. It will be my only chance, you know—there’s the hay to cut soon and the corn to cultivate, and the cattle to look after later. I can’t work all the year, Mammy, without a little play.” At which the mother’s tragic eyes filled with tears—this for her daughter’s only play—the riding in the lonesome hills—the fishing for trout in a shadowed cañon—when her young feet should have been tripping to the lilt of fiddles—when she should have had ribbons and muslin flounces, and a sweetheart—the things of youth ere her youth should pass! Pass, toiling at the handles of a plow! It was a poignant pain indeed, that brought those insistent tears, that withheld the fear-urged protest. So, in the golden mornings, Nance began to saddle Buckskin and ride away, a snack of bread and bacon tied behind the cantle, to come ambling home at dusk happy, sweet, filled with the joy of life, sometimes a string of speckled beauties dangling at her knee, sometimes empty handed. Sometimes Bud went with her, but it was not fair to Dan and Molly, the heavy team, to cheat them of their share of rest, since Bud must ride one or the other of them, and so Nance rode for the most part alone. She “lifted up her eyes to the hills” in all truth and drew from them a very present strength. The dark, blue-green slopes of the tumbling ridges, covered with a tapestry of finely picked out points of pine and fir-trees, filled her with the joy of the nature lover, the awed humility of the humble heart which considers the handiwork of God.