“I found that out long ago. I just had to.”
Isabel said no more. She was too busy thinking. The idea of a big boy like Don being satisfied with an attic room, and of a girl like Peggie being perfectly happy away out here in the hill country, puzzled her. She felt that these two had found the secret of contentment someway. Riding slowly along the up grade behind Peggie now, she caught herself remembering an old fairy tale that had perplexed her when she was a little girl, one about a king who sought the Land of Heart’s Content. He had traveled to the kingdom of Yesterday first, and had found it to be the Land of Heart’s Regret. Then he had gone to the far country of To-morrow, and had found that it was the Land of Heart’s Desire. So, finally, weary and travel-worn, he returned home, and found there in his own land of To-day, the Heart’s Content he longed for. Isabel wondered if perhaps the secret of happiness at the little Crossbar ranch was that the Murrays had all found the land of Heart’s Content.
Up and up they rode, after passing Sandy’s ranch, a little speck far below in the broad valley, then along a great tableland, covered with scattered spruce, like little watch-towers. Once they saw an eagle winging its course southward. It looked like a hawk at that distance. Mr. Murray pointed out to them its nest in the top of a great old pine, nearly dead, with only a few scattered branches towards the top that showed green.
Every once in a while a gray squirrel or young rabbit would stand still to watch their approach, then scud away into the underbrush in sudden alarm. Sometimes they caught sight of deer, and the girls wondered at their tameness.
“They’ve not been hunted much up this way,” Jean told them. “And you’re not allowed to kill any that have no horns, so that protects the does and the young. The open season lasts only from September fifteenth to November fifteenth.”
When the shadows pointed north, a stop was made at the first brook they came to, and lunch was spread.
“Oh, how good everything does taste!” exclaimed Polly.
“Wait till you’ve had bacon and corn cakes every morning for nearly a week,” laughed Jean. “Father used to have an old herder working for him, and he would say, ‘Bacon and corn cakes is the staff of existence for any man in the open.’”
“I know what I’d love to do,” Polly exclaimed. “I’d like to start off with a wagon like this, one that you could live in like gypsies, and just go and go, and take any road you liked best, until you were tired out.”
“But, goose, don’t you know that you’d never be tired?” said Jean. “We are all gypsies at heart when it comes to the love of the open.”