Later Stewart led them across a neck of the park, up a rather steep climb between towering crags, to take them out upon a grassy promontory that faced the great open west—­a vast, ridged, streaked, and reddened sweep of earth rolling down, as it seemed, to the golden sunset end of the world.  Castleton said it was a jolly fine view; Dorothy voiced her usual languid enthusiasm; Helen was on fire with pleasure and wonder; Mrs. Beck appealed to Bobby to see how he liked it before she ventured, and she then reiterated his praise; and Edith Wayne, like Madeline and Florence, was silent.  Boyd was politely interested; he was the kind of man who appeared to care for things as other people cared for them.

Madeline watched the slow transformation of the changing west, with its haze of desert dust, through which mountain and cloud and sun slowly darkened.  She watched until her eyes ached, and scarcely had a thought of what she was watching.  When her eyes shifted to encounter the tall form of Stewart standing motionless on the rim, her mind became active again.  As usual, he stood apart from the others, and now he seemed aloof and unconscious.  He made a dark, powerful figure, and he fitted that wild promontory.

She experienced a strange, annoying surprise when she discovered both Helen and Dorothy watching Stewart with peculiar interest.  Edith, too, was alive to the splendid picture the cowboy made.  But when Edith smiled and whispered in her ear, “It’s so good to look at a man like that,” Madeline again felt the surprise, only this time the accompaniment was a vague pleasure rather than annoyance.  Helen and Dorothy were flirts, one deliberate and skilled, the other unconscious and natural.  Edith Wayne, occasionally—­and Madeline reflected that the occasions were infrequent—­admired a man sincerely.  Just here Madeline might have fallen into a somewhat revealing state of mind if it had not been for the fact that she believed Stewart was only an object of deep interest to her, not as a man, but as a part of this wild and wonderful West which was claiming her.  So she did not inquire of herself why Helen’s coquetry and Dorothy’s languishing allurement annoyed her, or why Edith’s eloquent smile and words had pleased her.  She got as far, however, as to think scornfully how Helen and Dorothy would welcome and meet a flirtation with this cowboy and then go back home and forget him as utterly as if he had never existed.  She wondered, too, with a curious twist of feeling that was almost eagerness, how the cowboy would meet their advances.  Obviously the situation was unfair to him; and if by some strange accident he escaped unscathed by Dorothy’s beautiful eyes he would never be able to withstand Helen’s subtle and fascinating and imperious personality.

They returned to camp in the cool of the evening and made merry round a blazing camp-fire.  But Madeline’s guests soon succumbed to the persistent and irresistible desire to sleep.