Thatcher, looking at Sheila, had some of these thoughts. A teamster is either philosopher or clown. One cannot move, day after day, all day for a thousand days, under a changeless, changeful sky, inch by inch, across the surface of a changeless, changeful earth and not come very near to some of the locked doors of the temple where clowns sleep and wise men meditate. And Thatcher was a father, one of the wise and reasonable fathers of the West, whose seven-year-old sons are friends and helpmates and toward whom six-year-old daughters are moved to little acts of motherliness.
The sun blazed for a minute on Sheila's face. She opened her eyes, looked vaguely from some immense distance at Thatcher, and then sat up.
"Oh, gracious!" said Sheila, woman and sprite and adventurer again.
"Where the dickens is my hat? Did it fall out?"
"No, ma'am," Thatcher smiled in a relieved fashion. "I put it under the seat."
Sheila scrambled to a perch on one of the sacks and faced the surface of half a world.
"Oh, Mr. Thatcher, isn't it too wonderful! How high are we? Is this the other side? Oh, no, I can see Millings. Poor tiny, tiny Millings! It is small, isn't it? How very small it is! What air!" She shut her eyes, drawing in the perfumed tonic. The altitude had intoxicated her. Her heart was beating fast, her blood tingling, her brain electrified. Every sense seemed to be sharpened. She saw and smelt and heard with abnormal vividness.
"The flowers are awfully bright up here, aren't they?" she said. "What's that coral-colored bushy one?"
"Indian paint-brush."
"And that blue one? It is blue! I don't believe I ever knew what blueness meant before."
"Lupine. And over yonder's monkshead. That other's larkspur, that poisons cattle in the spring. On the other side you'll see a whole lot more—wild hollyhock and fireweed and columbine—well, say, I learned all them names from a dude I drove over one summer."