Then Madeline went to bed with Florence under the pine-tree.  Russ lay upon one side and Tartar upon the other.  The cool night breeze swept over her, fanning her face, waving her hair.  It was not strong enough to make any sound through the branches, but it stirred a faint, silken rustle in the long grass.  The coyotes began their weird bark and howl.  Russ raised his head to growl at their impudence.

Madeline faced upward, and it seemed to her that under those wonderful white stars she would never be able to go to sleep.  They blinked down through the black-barred, delicate crisscross of pine foliage, and they looked so big and so close.  Then she gazed away to open space, where an expanse of sky glittered with stars, and the longer she gazed the larger they grew and the more she saw.

It was her belief that she had come to love all the physical things from which sensations of beauty and mystery and strength poured into her responsive mind; but best of all she loved these Western stars, for they were to have something to do with her life, were somehow to influence her destiny.

* * *

For a few days the prevailing features of camp life for Madeline’s guests were sleep and rest.  Dorothy Coombs slept through twenty-four hours, and then was so difficult to awaken that for a while her friends were alarmed.  Helen almost fell asleep while eating and talking.  The men were more visibly affected by the mountain air than the women.  Castleton, however, would not succumb to the strange drowsiness while he had a chance to prowl around with a gun.

This languorous spell disappeared presently, and then the days were full of life and action.  Mrs. Beck and Bobby and Boyd, however, did not go in for anything very strenuous.  Edith Wayne, too, preferred to walk through the groves or sit upon the grassy promontory.  It was Helen and Dorothy who wanted to explore the crags and canyons, and when they could not get the others to accompany them they went alone, giving the cowboy guides many a long climb.

Necessarily, of course, Madeline and her guests were now thrown much in company with the cowboys.  And the party grew to be like one big family.  Her friends not only adapted themselves admirably to the situation, but came to revel in it.  As for Madeline, she saw that outside of a certain proclivity of the cowboys to be gallant and on dress-parade and alive to possibilities of fun and excitement, they were not greatly different from what they were at all times.  If there were a leveling process here it was made by her friends coming down to meet the Westerners.  Besides, any class of people would tend to grow natural in such circumstances and environment.

Madeline found the situation one of keen and double interest for her.  If before she had cared to study her cowboys, particularly Stewart, now, with the contrasts afforded by her guests, she felt by turns she was amused and mystified and perplexed and saddened, and then again subtly pleased.