"Very well, experience is a fine school. If you must run down, we'll go down the shadowed side. Now I'll let you get half-way down and beat you in, after all. One, two, three--go!" With her skirt caught up in her hand, she started down the hill in reckless flight. She heard his shout and the thud of his prodigious leaps, and just as she reached the level he overtook her and relentlessly left her far behind. Discouraged and panting, she fell into a walk and waited for him to return, as she knew he would. "Oh, these skirts!" she said, resentfully. "What chance has a woman with yards of cloth binding her? I nearly tumbled headlong." He did not make her suffer for her defeat, and they returned to camp gay as a couple of children. Lawson smiled benevolently, like an aged uncle, while Elsie told him of their climb. Said he: "When you're as old as I am you will wait for wonders to come your way; you will not seek them." The breakfast was made merry by Jennie, who waged gentle warfare on Parker, whose preconceived ideas of the people resident on an Indian reservation had been shaken. "Why, you're very decent," he admitted at last. "They are all like us--nit," replied Jennie. "We're marked 'special.'" "Couldn't be any more like you, sis," said Curtis. "_You_ shouldn't say that." "Well, it needed saying, and no one else seemed ready to do it. If Calvin had been here!" "Who is Calvin?" asked Mrs. Parker. "I know!" cried Elsie. "He's one of the handsomest young cowboys you ever saw. If you want to do a cow-puncher, Parker, he's your model." "I certainly must see him. If I don't do a cowboy or a bucking bronco I'm a failure." As they were ready to start, Elsie again took her place beside Curtis, but Lawson insisted on sitting behind with Jennie. "It's hard luck, Parker, to have to sit with your wife," he said, compassionately. "Oh, well! I'm used to disappointments," Parker replied, in resigned calm. Elsie felt the need of justifying herself. "Are you complaining? Am I the assistant driver, or am I not? If I am, here is where I belong." "When I was coaching in Scotland once--" began Lawson. "Oh, never mind Scotland!" interrupted Elsie. "See that chain of peaks? Aren't they gorgeous! Do we camp there?" "Yes," replied Curtis. "Just where that fan-shaped belt of timber begins, I hope to set our tent. The agency is just between those dark ridges." "It is strange," Elsie said, after a pause. "Last year I was _wondering_ at everything; now I am looking for familiar things." "That is the second stage," he answered. "The third will be sympathy." "What will the fourth be?" "Affection." "And the fifth?" "Devotion." She laughed. "You place too high a value on your Western land." "I admit there is to me great charm in these barren foot-hills and the great divide they lead up to," he soberly answered.