In the timbered valleys there was an admirable growth of elms, cottonwoods, black walnuts. Haws and persimmons, not yet ripe, young acorns of the oak trees, showed what the fall mast would be. The black bears and the deer even now were hunting mushrooms. Abundance of food was there for every species. The spotted wildcat made no unusual sight. Now and then a panther passed ghostlike from one covert to the next. A rich land and a contented, indolent, assured. The white men had not yet come. Nor was there even here either weed or bee. Though really near the eastern edge of their range of that day, distant bands of the buffalo still showed; and adding yet keener zest to an enlivened landscape, frequent bands of wild horses passed in their easy drifting over the grasslands, or stood at gaze in superb confidence in their own speed. It was the open country, the free country, of the old West. In it these men were as much adventurers as had been the sailors of Columbus or Cabot, Leif Ericson or Magellan. It had taken three Army expeditions and a half century of time to find the head of the Red River, which made the drovers’ Rubicon. Young in the youth of their world, they exulted as they rode. Colonel Sandy Griswold quit the saddle for the jolting cart seat to which Nabours had banished Taisie Lockhart. The wilderness makes swift friendships. “My dear,” said the soldier to the girl one day as they rode, joltingly along. “I wouldn’t ask anything better than just to ride along this way with you forever. You are by no means painful to the naked eye, and within sixty days you will be rich. Abilene is not a dream, although it is just beginning. Two railroads are going west across the lower Plains now. They are going to make a cattle market at Abilene and you are in on the ground floor. Rich? Are you going to support a husband? You could, you know.” “I think I’ll buy myself some clothes the first thing I’ll do,” said Taisie, slowly smiling, “if there is such a thing as women’s clothes at Abilene.” “There you go! Woman’s first instinct. Tell me”—suddenly—“where is that tall young man—you know which one I mean. You don’t know where he is?” “I think he’s back behind to-day. He’s not regularly on the herd—now.” “You don’t know very much, do you, my dear? You’d let a brave, square man ride on the drag?” “Please don’t, I beg of you! I don’t really know why you mention him. My men all are splendid.” But he went on relentlessly. “Yes; and I suppose you know that your men are riding his horses—that you are eating his food yourself? Did you know that he staked you for this drive—that he is going to make your fortune for you? No, you never knew that. But that’s true.” “Oh, don’t tell me such things!” broke out Taisie in swift consternation. “I never knew that! Of course I never knew it! I’d never have gone a foot! Oh, this is an awful thing!”