So with the plains: that portion of which I speak. Distance smoothed its native ruggedness, glossed over its facial wrinkles, so to say. The illusion became at once apparent when one moved toward any given point. The negligible creases developed into deep coulees, the gentle undulations proved long sharp-pitched divides. Creeks, flood-worn serpentine water-courses, surprised one in unexpected places. I had not noticed these things particularly while I rode. Now, as I tramped across country, persuading myself that over each succeeding hill I should find my light-footed sorrel horse meekly awaiting me, it seemed that I was always either climbing up or sliding down. I found myself deep in an abstract problem as I plodded—trying to strike a balance between the illusory level effect and stern topographical realities. Presently I gave that up, and came back to concrete facts. Whereupon, being very tired and stiff from a longer ride than I had ever taken before, and correspondingly ill-tempered, I damned the red horse for bucking me off and myself for permitting any beast of the field to serve me so, and then sat down upon the peak of a low hill to reflect where and how I should come by my supper. A smart breeze frolicked up from that quarter where the disappearing sun cast a bloodshot haze over a few tumbled clouds. This, I daresay, muffled sounds behind me to some extent. At any rate, I was startled out of my cogitations by a voice close by—a drawly utterance which evoked a sudden vision of a girl with wind-raveled hair, and a lean, dark-faced man leaning over a deck railing on the _Moon_. “Magnificent outlook, isn’t it?” Notwithstanding the surprise of finding him at my elbow in such unexpected fashion, I faced about with tolerable calmness. That intuitive flash had been no false harbinger, for it was Barreau sure enough. The angular visage of him was not to be confounded with that of any casual stranger, even though his habiliments were no longer broadcloth and its concomitants of linen and polished shoes. Instead, a gray Stetson topped his head, and he was gloved and booted like a cowboy. Lest it be thought that his plight was twin to my own, I will say that he looked down upon me from the back of a horse as black as midnight, a long-geared brute with a curved neck and a rolling eye. Best of all, at the end of a lariat Barreau held my own red horse. “That,” said I, “depends on how you look at it. I’ll admit that the outlook is fine—since you have brought me back my runaway horse.” “I meant _that_,” he nodded to the glowing horizon. “But I daresay a man gets little pleasure out of a red sky when he is set afoot in a horseless land. It will pay you, my friend, to keep your horse between your legs hereafter.” “He threw me,” I confessed. “Where did you catch him? And how did you find me?”