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grandeur. Mountains clambered over mountains in the dimly lighted distance, and reaching to the red horizon, overlooked the Pacific seas.

"The antelope and elk are gone," she thought, "and we are lone watchers amid the eternal vastness. But the sage-hen, the lizard, the owl, and the jaybird linger; and yonder, among the everlasting rocks, are the homes of the Indian, the rattlesnake, the badger, and the wolf."

Rustling footsteps startled her. "Why, it's daddie! " she exclaimed, her heart beating audibly. '* I thought you were an Indian or a bear!"

"You oughtn't to go off alone, my daughter. There is some hidden danger threatening us; I feel, but cannot divine it. Something is going wrong somewhere or somehow. Let's hurry back to camp."

"You're the last person on earth I'd suspect of giving way to a morbid fancy, daddie dear. You must be very tired."

"It isn't that, my daughter. I am sad because you have allowed your heart to stray, and I do need you so much—so much!"

She answered not a word.

XXVIII

THE STAMPEDE

THE next morning brought unexpected delays. The repairs about the camp and wagons consumed more time than had been anticipated, and it was ten o'clock before the cattle, which had been allowed to stray farther from camp than usual, in search of the dried and scanty herbage that alone staved off starvation, were driven into camp and hurried down to the river-bank to drink. The swiftness, foam,