Away down long, long slopes to low, wide valleys, and up long, long slopes to the next higher prairie level.
Away across the plain skirting sleughs where ducks of various kinds, and in hundreds, quacked and plunged and fought joyously and all unheeding.
Away with the morning air, rare and wondrously exhilarating, rushing at them and past them and filling their hearts with the keen zest of living.

Away beyond sight and sound of the great world, past little shacks, the brave vanguard of civilization, whose solitary loneliness only served to emphasize their remoteness from the civilization which they heralded.

Away from the haunts of men and through the haunts of wild things where the shy coyote, his head thrown back over his shoulder, loped laughing at them and their futile noisy speed.

Away through the wide rich pasture lands where feeding herds of cattle and bands of horses made up the wealth of the solitary rancher, whose low-built wandering ranch house proclaimed at once his faith and his courage.

Away and ever away, the shining morning hours and the fleeting miles racing with them, till by noon-day, all wet but still unweary, the bronchos drew up at the Big River Stopping Place, forty miles from the point of their departure.
Close behind the democrat rode Dr.Martin, the steady pace of his wise old broncho making up upon the dashing but somewhat erratic gait of the colts.
While the ladies passed into the primitive Stopping Place, the men unhitched the ponies, stripped off their harness and proceeded to rub them down from head to heel, wash out their mouths and remove from them as far as they could by these attentions the travel marks of the last six hours.
Big River could hardly be called even by the generous estimate of the optimistic westerner a town.