Page:Hare and Tortoise (1925).pdf/39

 ". . . Marriage is being together, though."

He let that pass and returned to his point. "A big thing to Katie, but negligible in the light of something else, I suppose you mean?"

"Exactly."

"In the light of what, for example?"

"I don't quite know, dear. I'll tell you when I've had time to philosophize it out."

She kissed him and went out to the saddle shed.

Sundown knew his mistress's moods and decided on an easy trot for the first few miles of the route, which lay through groves of pine and yellowing cottonwood. Eventually the road emerged into a broad stretch of dust-green sage perforated with gopher holes, and Louise set a diagonal course toward the stony river bed which had to be forded. A flock of snow-white pelicans sailed lazily overhead, following the stream toward favorite fishing pools. A high line of mountains, pale green, violet, and buff, merged into the hazy sky. The heat was oppressive and ominous.

For an hour not one human being crossed her path. The only sign of habitation had been the villainous dog and three or four horses of a not too prosperous homestead owned by one of Keble's horse wranglers. All along the road she had been preoccupied by the tone of her parting talk with Keble, vaguely chagrined that her husband seemed to deprecate her identifying herself too closely with the life of the natives. Strangely enough he sought to identify