For two hours following that noonday rest the ride was most uncomfortable, hot, dusty, slow, over a rough road, from which nothing but bleached and sear grass slopes could be seen. But at last, when they emerged on the outlook above Wild Goose Lake, Ina suddenly felt rejuvenated.

A breeze which was hot, but still a breeze, swept up from the vast gray–and–black basin. The slope was long, rolling, somehow beautiful despite the aridity. At a distance the sage appeared softly gray, merging into purple. Wild Goose Lake was an immense round body of muddy water, surrounded by mile–wide shore lines, denuded, stark in the sunlight. The sage hills now appeared to rise to the dignity of mountains, long–sloping, domelike. A cowboy called Marvie’s attention to black and white dots on the far high slope. Wild horses! How Ina thrilled to the words and the sight! Yet this feeling was slight to that which gripped her when Marvie pointed across the great open space of land and water to a winding pale ribbon—Forlorn River. Could a more felicitous name have been given it? Dim and almost indistinct was the mouth of the river. It looked as if it sank into the sands. And scarcely clearer was the point of land, with its dark blur of trees, that marked the wild and lonely homestead of Ben Ide.

Ina’s heart swelled into her throat. No wonder he loved that place. She loved it herself, at first sight; and a vague sweet emotion attended the assurance. Far across and above the gray monotony where Forlorn River wound its way climbed the black ranges into the sky. These, a cowboy said, were the mountains of Nevada.

The hours of riding that followed did not wear on Ina’s spirit, though at the last she suffered in flesh and bone. She had an ever–changing, ever–wonderful prospect to gaze upon, and always a feeling of some intimate connection with it. She did not trouble to explain this latter complex assumption. But she thought once—what extraordinary good luck for her that Hart Blaine and Less Setter should have chosen Wild Goose Lake and Forlorn River for their field of operations this summer! Almost she laughed aloud in a strange exultation, totally foreign to her. But deep in her there had been born a rankling strife. Here, approaching an environment she had cherished in her thoughts, she was conscious of roused and accepted conflict. And like a lightning flash came the query—why? Ina dared not answer it with her mind. Involuntarily her pulse, her blood, the leap of flesh answered it physically.

* * * * *

It was four o’clock in the afternoon when the Blaine party arrived at the deserted ranch. Ina had never seen such a squalid place. Dilapidated sheds, fences rotting on the ground, mummified remains of dead cattle, two old flat black log cabins, patched with yellow boards and sheets of tin, dust and dirt and rocks everywhere, with not a blade of grass or living shrub of green—these were the dominant characteristics of the latest acquisition of Hart Blaine.