Reddy, always unreliable, must have forgotten to fill
it when she told him to.
By the road she must be thirty miles from home if she were a
step; across country as the crow flies, perhaps twenty. She was a
young woman of resolution, and she wasted no time in tears or
regrets. The XIX ranch, owned by a small "nester" named
Henderson, could not be more than five or six miles to the
southeast. If she struck across the hills she would be sure to
run into one of the barblines. At the XIX she could get a horse
and reach the Lazy D by midnight. Without any hesitation she
struck out. It was unfortunate that she did not have on her heavy
laced high boots, but she realized that she must take things as
she found them. Things might have been a good deal worse, she
reflected philosophically.
And before long they were worse, for the increasing darkness
blotted out the landmarks she was using as guides and she was
lost among the hill waves that rolled one after another across
the range. Still she did not give way, telling herself that it
would be better after the moon was up. She could then tell north
from south, and so have a line by which to travel. But when at
length the stars came out, thousands upon thousands of them, and
looked down on a land magically flooded with chill moonlight, the
girl found that the transformation of Wyoming into this scence of
silvery loveliness had toned the distant mountain line to an
indefinite haze that made it impossible for her to distinguish
one peak from another.
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