“Wal, Miss Majesty, it jest makes my old heart warm up to think of sich a thing.  I dreamed a lot when I first come hyar.  What would I do if I hed unlimited money?  Listen.  I’d buy out Don Carlos an’ the Greasers.  I’d give a job to every good cowman in this country.  I’d make them prosper as I prospered myself.  I’d buy all the good horses on the ranges.  I’d fence twenty thousand acres of the best grazin’.  I’d drill fer water in the valley.  I’d pipe water down from the mountains.  I’d dam up that draw out there.  A mile-long dam from hill to hill would give me a big lake, an’ hevin’ an eye fer beauty, I’d plant cottonwoods around it.  I’d fill that lake full of fish.  I’d put in the biggest field of alfalfa in the South-west.  I’d plant fruit-trees an’ garden.  I’d tear down them old corrals an’ barns an’ bunk-houses to build new ones.  I’d make this old rancho some comfortable an’ fine.  I’d put in grass an’ flowers all around an’ bring young pine-trees down from the mountains.  An’ when all thet was done I’d sit in my chair an’ smoke an’ watch the cattle stringin’ in fer water an’ stragglin’ back into the valley.  An’ I see the cowboys ridin’ easy an’ heah them singin’ in their bunks.  An’ thet red sun out there wouldn’t set on a happier man in the world than Bill Stillwell, last of the old cattlemen.”

Madeline thanked the rancher, and then rather abruptly retired to her room, where she felt no restraint to hide the force of that wonderful idea, now full-grown and tenacious and alluring.

Upon the next day, late in the afternoon, she asked Alfred if it would be safe for her to ride out to the mesa.

“I’ll go with you,” he said, gaily.

“Dear fellow, I want to go alone,” she replied.

“Ah!” Alfred exclaimed, suddenly serious.  He gave her just a quick glance, then turned away.  “Go ahead.  I think it’s safe.  I’ll make it safe by sitting here with my glass and keeping an eye on you.  Be careful coming down the trail.  Let the horse pick his way.  That’s all.”

She rode Majesty across the wide flat, up the zigzag trail, across the beautiful grassy level to the far rim of the mesa, and not till then did she lift her eyes to face the southwest.

Madeline looked from the gray valley at her feet to the blue Sierra Madres, gold-tipped in the setting sun.  Her vision embraced in that glance distance and depth and glory hitherto unrevealed to her.  The gray valley sloped and widened to the black sentinel Chiricahuas, and beyond was lost in a vast corrugated sweep of earth, reddening down to the west, where a golden blaze lifted the dark, rugged mountains into bold relief.  The scene had infinite beauty.  But after Madeline’s first swift, all-embracing flash of enraptured eyes, thought of beauty passed away.  In that darkening desert there was something illimitable.  Madeline saw the hollow of a stupendous hand; she felt a mighty hold upon her heart.