“I guess a man generally has something on his mind, even when he rides for fun,” Robin told her. He explained briefly why he was riding the gray horse in the cool of evening, all by himself in that lonely bottom, and where he was bound. They rode back to the corral. Stormy was docile now, a very model of high-spirited gentleness. Robin took the lead rope of his other pony. They crossed the creek and rode up on the opposite bank and the range opened before them. The Sutherland ranch lay in a hollow of the hills, masked by pine timber. The Bar M Bar was seven miles south, nestled in Little Birch. Robin could see the contour of the rolling ground behind his own place. Away on the farther edge of the westward plains the sun dipped below the horizon. The Bear Paws loomed over them on the north, a cluster of high peaks notching the sky line like the teeth of a huge saw. The canyons between the mountains were filled with a pearly tinge slowly turning into the first night shadows. All about them a great stillness in which crickets chirped--over them a sapphire sky with streaks of red and touches of pale gold in the west. “Which way you riding?” Robin asked. “I’m not riding. I’m looking,” May said in a low absent tone. “Look!” She waved a gloved hand in a gesture that swept half the horizon. Robin looked. He saw far off the dark line of the Missouri, flanked by the crisscross gashes of the Bad Lands. He saw far beyond the river the Moccasin Mountains, the Snowies, the Belts, pale bluish dabs like so many mirages. He didn’t look for anything in particular. He didn’t expect to see anything of sensational import such as a stampeding herd, or vigilantes pursuing train robbers, or cloud-bursts flooding low ground nor indeed any of the high lights which in other times and places are presumed to be shed almost continuously upon the cattle country. Robin was not obtuse. He had a dim comprehension of what the girl meant when she said “Look!” in that low, tense voice. Robin himself often paused on high ground to look away into those noble spaces--to wonder---- May looked inquiringly at Robin now. “What do you see away off there?” she asked. “Room. Lots of room. Room to move around without knockin’ your elbows against somebody or something you don’t happen to like. And it’s pretty--no, that ain’t the right word. You know what I mean, though, I guess,” Robin finished lamely. “I like lots of room, myself.” “Yes, I know what you mean.” She rested her hand on the saddle horn before her and her tone was reflective. “I just wondered if you saw it, or felt it without seeing it. Space and freedom! Freedom without stint and space without limit,” she murmured more to herself than to the cow-puncher beside her. “I wish I were a poet.” She lifted her eyes again to Robin with that slow, faint, friendly smile.