It was the wilderness, rude, bold, yet sweet.
Who shall say what thoughts the flowered wilderness of spring carried to the soul of a young woman beautiful and ripe for love, her heart as sweet and melting as that of the hidden plover telling her mate of happiness?
Surely a strange spell, born of youth and all this free world of things beginning, fell on the soul of Molly Wingate.

She sat and dreamed, her hands idle, her arms empty, her beating pulses full, her heart full of a maid's imaginings.
How long she sat alone, miles apart, an unnoticed figure, she herself could not have said--surely the sun was past zenith--when, moved by some vague feeling of her own, she noticed the uneasiness of her feeding charges.
The mules, hobbled and side-lined as Jed had shown her, turned face to the wind, down the valley, standing for a time studious and uncertain rather than alarmed.

Then, their great ears pointed, they became uneasy; stirred, stamped, came back again to their position, gazing steadily in the one direction.
The ancient desert instinct of the wild ass, brought down through thwarted generations, never had been lost to them.

They had foreknowledge of danger long before horses or human beings could suspect it.
Danger?
What was it?
Something, surely.

Molly sprang to her feet.