Mary V was indefatigably pursuing a new and apparently fascinating avocation, for which her mother expressed little sympathy, no enthusiasm whatever, and a grudgingly given consent.  Mary V was making a collection of Desert Glimpses for educational purposes at her boarding school.  She had long been urged to do so by her schoolmates and teachers, she told her mother, and now she was going to do it.  It should be the very best, most complete collection any one could possibly make within riding distance of the Rolling R. Incidentally she meant to collect jackrabbit ears and rattlesnake rattles, for the purpose of thrilling the girls, but she did not tell her mother that.  Neither did she tell her mother just why her quest always lay to the southward when there was plenty of desert to be glimpsed toward the north and to the east and the west.  She did not even tell herself why she did that.

So Mary V, knowing well the terrific heat she would have to face in the middle of the day, ordered her horse saddled when the boys saddled their own—­which was about sunrise.  She did not keep it standing more than half an hour or so before she came out and mounted him.  She was well equipped for her enterprise.  She carried a camera, three extra rolls of film, a telescoped tripod which she tied under her right stirrup leather, a pair of high-power Busch glasses (to glimpse with, probably), two duck-covered canteens filled and dripping, a generous lunch of sandwiches and cake and sour pickles, a box-magazine .22 rifle, a knife, a tube of cold cream wrapped in a bit of cheesecloth, and a very compact yet very complete vanity case.  Jostling the vanity case in her saddle pocket were two boxes of soft-nose, .22-long cartridges for the rifle.  Furthermore, for special personal protection she had an extremely businesslike six-shooter which she carried in a shoulder holster under her riding shirt; a concession to her father, who had made her promise never to ride away from the ranch without it.

For apparel Mary V wore a checked riding coat and breeches, together with black puttees.  The suit had grown a bit shabby for Los Angeles, and Mary V’s mother believed that town cast-offs should be worn out on the ranch.  Mary V did not mind.  She hated the cumbersome riding skirts of the range girl proper, and much preferred the breeches.  When she had put a little distance between herself and the ranch, she usually removed the coat and tied it in a roll behind the cantle.  She looked then like a slim boy—­or she would have, except for the hat.  Mary V cherished her complexion, which Arizona sun and winds would have burned a brick red.  In cool weather she wore a Stetson like the boys; but now she favored a great, straw sombrero such as you see section hands wear along the railroad track in Arizona.  To keep it on her head in the winds she had resorted to tying a ribbon down over the brim from the front of the crown to the nape of her neck; and tying another ribbon from the back of the crown