If he had been less wise he might have told her that she had told him not to come until after ten and that he had noticed that she had been waiting for him in spite of her apparent reluctance of yesterday. But he steered carefully away from this pitfall. He dismounted and threw the bridle rein over Mustard's head, coming around beside the porch.
"I wasn't thinkin' to hurry you, ma'am," he said. "But I reckon we'll go now. It's cert'nly a fine day for ridin'." He stood silent for a moment, looking about him. Then he flushed. "Why, I'm gettin' right box-headed, ma'am," he declared. "Here I am standin' an' makin' you sick with my palaver, an' your horse waitin' to be caught up."
He stepped quickly to Mustard's side and uncoiled his rope. She stood on the porch, watching him as he proceeded to the corral, caught the pony, and flung a bridle on it. Then he led the animal to the porch and cinched the saddle carefully. Throwing the reins over the pommel of the saddle, he stood at the animal's head, waiting.
She came to the edge of the porch, placed a slender, booted foot into the ox-bow stirrup, and swung gracefully up. In an instant he had vaulted into his own saddle, and together they rode out upon the gray-white floor of the flat.
They rode two miles, keeping near the fringe of cottonwoods, and presently mounted a long slope. Half an hour later Miss Radford looked back and saw the flat spread out behind, silent, vast, deserted, slumbering in the swimming white sunlight. A little later she looked again, and the flat was no longer there, for they had reached the crest of the slope and their trail had wound them round to a broad level, from which began another slope, several miles distant.
They had ridden for more than two hours, talking very little, when they reached the crest of the last rise and saw, spreading before them, a level many miles wide, stretching away in three directions. It was a grass plateau, but the grass was dry and drooping and rustled under the ponies' hoofs. There were no trees, but a post oak thicket skirted the southern edge, and it was toward this that he urged his pony. She followed, smiling to think that he was deceiving himself in believing that she had not yet explored this place.
They came close to the thicket, and he swung off his horse and stood at her stirrup.
"I was wantin' you to see the country from here," he said, as he helped her down. She watched him while he picketed the horses, so that they might not stray. Then they went together to the edge of the thicket, seating themselves in a welcome shade.
At their feet the plateau dropped sheer, as though cut with a knife, and a little way out from the base lay a narrow ribbon of water that flowed slowly in its rocky bed, winding around the base of a small hill, spreading over a shallow bottom, and disappearing between the buttes farther down.
Everything beneath them was distinguishable, though distant. Knobs rose here; there a flat spread. Mountains frowned in the distance, but so far away that they seemed like papier-mache shapes towering in a sea of blue. Like a map the country seemed as Miss Radford and Ferguson looked down upon it, yet a big map, over which one might wonder; more vast, more nearly perfect, richer in detail than any that could be evolved from the talents of man.