Danny rubbed his horse's drenched withers and agreed with a nod as Jed walked over to the gate and fumbled with the fastening.
"Say," he said, turning round, "I like th' way you ride!"
Danny looked up quickly, pleased.
"I'm glad," he said, but in the simple assertion was a great self-pride.
"Most fellers strange in th' country wouldn't fancy takin' that kind of a bust down off a point. No, sir. Not such a ride for us old heads, but for a greenhorn— Well, I guess you'll get to be a top hand some day, all right!"
And the influence which more than all else was to help Danny become a top hand, which was to set up in his heart the great ambition, which was to hold itself up as a blazing ideal, came early in his novitiate as a horse hunter—came in a fitting setting, on a day richly golden, when the air seemed filled with a haze of holy incense, holy with the holiness of beauty. It was one of those mountain days when the immensity of nature becomes so obvious and so potent that even the beasts leave off their hunting or their grazing to gaze into wondrous distances. The sage is green and brash in the near sunlight, soft and purple out yonder; the hills sharp and hard and detailed under the faultless sky for unthinkable miles about, then soft and vague, melting in color and line, rolling, reaching, tossing in a repetition of ranges until eyes ache in following them and men are weak about their middles from the feeling of vastnesses to which measurements by figures are profane.
Jed and Danny searched for horses along two parallel ridges. Now and then they saw each other, but for the most part it had been a day of solitary riding.
Late afternoon arrived, and Danny had about abandoned hope of success. He was considering the advisability of mounting the ridge above the gulch into which he had ridden and locating Jed, though loath to leave the solitudes.
His pony picked them out and stopped before Danny's eyes registered the sight. The boy searched quickly, and over against a clump of cedars, halfway up the rise, he saw horses.
"No, that's not they," he muttered. "Jed said there were two white mares among them. Not—"