"My!" she gasped, at the exhibition of the engineer's strength, "I believe you could pull their front feet off the ground."
Her companion was still smiling.
"Why didn't you tell me you could drive?" she demanded.
He chuckled maliciously, for he had understood her reason for taking the reins at the start and he had not been insensible of the meaning of her glances at the beginning of the ride. "You didn't ask me, and besides I enjoyed seeing you handle them."
"But you told me you couldn't ride," she said reproachfully.
"I can't," he returned. "That is I never did; not as you people in this country ride." Then he laughed again. "Confess now. Didn't you expect me to jump, back there?"
"I shall confess nothing," she retorted, sharply. "And hereafter I shall take nothing for granted."
On the high ground near the foot of the hill at the canyon's mouth she asked him to turn around and stop. Willard Holmes had been too much occupied with the team and the girl to notice the landscape; and now that wonderful view of the Mesa, The King's Basin and the mountains burst upon him without warning. No sane man could be insensible of the grandeur of that scene. The man, whose eyes had looked only upon eastern landscapes that bore in every square foot of their limited range the evidence of man's presence, was silent—awe-stricken before the mighty expanse of desert that lay as it was fashioned by the creative forces that formed the world. Turning at last from the glorious, ever-changing scenes, wrought in colors of gold and rose and lilac and purple and blue, to the girl whose eyes were fixed questioningly upon him, he said in a low voice: "Is it always like this?"
Barbara nodded. "Always like that, but always changing. It is never the same, but always the same. Like—like life itself. Do you understand?"
He turned again to the scene in silent wonder.