“Thank you, Mr. Hunter, but I can’t. I’ve got to be making for home. Good-by, Virginia,” he said, jumping from his horse to shake hands with her, as she stood beside her father. “I’m going to be lonesome without you. Don’t forget us, will you?” “Good-by, Don.” She had the same little catch in her voice as upon the hills, and her eyes were grave again. “I’ll miss you, and, of course, I won’t forget. And, Don,” she called, as he swung himself into his saddle and galloped away, “remember, I’ll not be a young lady when I come back!” CHAPTER II THE LAST NIGHT AT HOME In the mountain country the twilights are longer and the sunset colors lovelier than anywhere else. Long after Virginia and her father, supper over, had come out upon the porch to sit together, the golden light lingered in the western sky, making more blue the far distant mountains, throwing the prairie into shadow, and casting upon the nearer eastern foot-hills a strange, almost violet glow. Slowly the gold changed to the deep, almost transparent blue of the mountain sky at night. The sunset light faded to give place to the stars, which, when the twilight was almost gone, seemed to shine out all at once, as if fearful of the sunset’s lingering too long. It was very still everywhere. Virginia sat in her favorite way—on a low stool by her father’s chair, her head upon his knees, his hand in hers. Together they watched the light fade and the stars come out, as they had done for so many nights. No sound anywhere, except Hannah’s steps in the kitchen, an occasional distant laugh or song from the men in the bunk-house, and the night noises—the stirring of the cottonwoods and the singing of the insects. For a long time neither of them spoke, and the realization coming closer every moment that this evening would be their last chance to talk together for many months, did not seem to make conversation easier. The big man in his chair was reviewing the years—thinking of the time, twenty-five years back, when he had first come to this country—then wild and unbroken like its own animals and roaming horses. He had come like countless other young men, seeking a new life, adventure, fortune; and he had stayed, having found an abundance of the first two, and enough of the last. In the darkness he saw the distant, widely separated lights of the homes on the prairie—that prairie which he as a young man had ridden across, then sagebrush-covered, the home of the antelope, the prairie dog, and the rattler; now, intersected with irrigation ditches, covered with wheat fields, dotted with homes. Yet the land possessed its old charm for him. It was still a big country. The mountains had not changed; the plains, though different in feature, stretched as wide; the sky was as vast. He loved this land, so much that it had become a part of him; but his little daughter at his feet he was sending away that she might know another life.