Eventually she brought her bronco to subjection, and they trotted off together along the wagon-road quite comfortably. By this time the youth had forgotten his depression, his homesickness of the morning. The valley was again enchanted ground. Its vistas led to lofty heights. The air was regenerative, and though a part of this elation was due, no doubt, to the power of his singularly attractive guide, he laid it discreetly to the climate. After shacking along between some rather sorry fields of grain for a mile or two, Berea swung into a side-trail. "I want you to meet my mother," she said. The grassy road led to a long, one-story, half-log, half-slab house, which stood on the bank of a small, swift, willow-bordered stream. "This is our ranch," she explained. "All the meadow in sight belongs to us." The young Easterner looked about in astonishment. Not a tree bigger than his thumb gave shade. The gate of the cattle corral stood but a few feet from the kitchen door, and rusty beef-bones, bleaching skulls, and scraps of sun-dried hides littered the ground or hung upon the fence. Exteriorly the low cabin made a drab, depressing picture; but as he alighted--upon Berea's invitation--and entered the house, he was met by a sweet-faced, brown-haired little woman in a neat gown, whose bearing was not in the least awkward or embarrassed. "This is Mr. Norcross, the tourist I told you about," explained Berrie. Mrs. McFarlane extended her small hand with friendly impulse. "I'm very glad to meet you, sir. Are you going to spend some time at the Mill?" "I don't know. I have a letter to Mr. Meeker from a friend of mine who hunted with him last year--a Mr. Sutler." "Mr. Sutler! Oh, we know him very well. Won't you sit down?" The interior of the house was not only well kept, but presented many evidences of refinement. A mechanical piano stood against the log wall, and books and magazines, dog-eared with use, littered the table; and Norcross, feeling the force of Nash's half-expressed criticism of his "superior," listened intently to Mrs. McFarlane's apologies for the condition of the farmyard. "Well," said Berea, sharply, "if we're to reach Uncle Joe's for dinner we'd better be scratching the hills." And to her mother she added: "I'll pull in about dark." The mother offered no objection to her daughter's plan, and the young people rode off together directly toward the high peaks to the east. "I'm going by way of the cut-off," Berrie explained; and Norcross, content and unafraid, nodded in acquiescence. "Here is the line," she called a few minutes later, pointing at a sign nailed to a tree at the foot of the first wooded hill. The notice, printed in black ink on a white square of cloth, proclaimed this to be the boundary of the Bear Tooth National Forest, and pleaded with all men to be watchful of fires. Its tone was not at all that of a strong government; it was deprecatory.