There it was! A pale gray streak was drawn along the very edge of the world, far, far away. It was just as though a brushful of gray paint had been dashed along that line where the earth and the sky met.
The gray line remained, though growing more distinct, while above it a band of faint pink rimmed the east as far as she could see. Nan drew her kimono about her shoulders and shivered ecstatically. This was the wonderful thing that she had awakened with in her mind.
Sunrise!
A gun could have shot the earth away out there across the rolling plain no more suddenly with yellow than now was done by the sun's reflection. It had not come into sight yet; but Nan could see the colors reaching upward toward the zenith. A riot of color hurried everywhere, over the earth and up in the sky; and then—
"There he is!" shouted Nan aloud, as the edge of a fiery red ball appeared.
"What is the matter with you, Nan Sherwood?" complained Bess, from her bed.
"Oh, what is it? Nan!" shrieked Grace, sitting straight up in bed and evidently expecting that the very worst had happened.
"It's morning, you lazy things," whispered Nan. "Sh! Get up and see the most wonderful sight you ever did see."
"I bet the sun is getting up in the west," gasped Bess, hopping out of bed at this announcement.
Already there was a stir about the place. Down at the bunk houses the dogs began to yap and some full-throated cow-puncher sent forth a "Yee! Yee! Yee! Yip!" that acted as rising call for all the hands. As the three girls from so much farther east gathered at the low window to peer out, there sounded another cowboy salute and there dashed by with the drumming of hoofs a little party of mounted men who rode just as the cowboys do in the moving pictures.