He shook his head and Judith went on.  “Peter says I can have the pick of the lot, but there’s only one I’d look at.  He’s the image of Sister.  I’m going to train him so’s I can take him out to run wild horses with me when he grows up.”

“Wild horses!  The last time it was bronco busting you were going into.  What’s it all about, anyhow, Jude?”

“You don’t suppose I’m going to spend my life in Lost Chief, do you?” demanded Judith.

Douglas swept the landscape with a lazy glance.  “I don’t see how you could beat it.”

“O, for looks and stunts, yes!” Judith’s voice was impatient.  “But it’s no place for a woman!  I’m going to earn enough money to take me out where I can go on with my education and amount to something.”

“I guess Peter’s been talking to you,” said Douglas.

Judith nodded.  “Yes, and he offered to loan me the money for college.  But I won’t be beholden to a man outside the family.  I’ll earn it myself.”

“What’ll you do with a college education after you get it?” Doug’s glance was not lazy now, as it rested on the young girl’s eager face.

“I’ll do something beside cooking and horse wrangling for some old Lost Chief rancher, I can tell you that!” cried Judith.  “I’m going to get out and see the world and know life!”

“And give up your horses and dogs and the big old mountains?  Jude, you’ll never do it.  I’d like to get out myself sometimes, but I know I’ll never be happy anywhere else.”

“I don’t expect to be happy, but I’ve got to know things.”

“What things, Judith?”

The girl turned from Douglas to gaze at the far light on Fire Mesa.

“The truth about things,” she said at last.  “Inez says there’s just one big fact at the bottom of everything and that is sex, and that there’s only one thing worth living for, to make sex beautiful.”

“She’s a liar!” exclaimed Douglas indignantly, as if Inez had said something shameful.  “Where does she get that rotten stuff?”

“From Charleton and poetry, I guess.  How do you know she’s wrong, Doug?”

Douglas sat up, his clear eyes blazing like blue stars out of his sunburned face.  “Because I know!  I want to have the biggest, finest ranch in the Rockies.  Is that sex?  You want a good education.  Is that sex?  Peter wants me to carry on some dreams my mother and grandfather had.  Is that sex?  What does that woman think the world was made for, I’d like to know?”

“That’s just it,” Judith sighed with all the sadness of sixteen, “what is it made for?”

There was silence for a moment on the hay rick while the two young questioners gazed at the incomparable grandeur about them.  And as he gazed there returned to Douglas the sense of panic that had harassed him after Oscar’s death.  What did it all mean?  Whither was he directed and by what?  How long before he too would be swept into the awful void beyond the grave?