Finally he earned a good dig from a spur, and then, with swift pounding of hoofs, he plunged and veered and danced in the sage.

Lucy kept her temper, which was what most riders did not do, and by patience and firmness pulled Sage King out of his prancing back into the trail.

He was not the least cross-grained, and, having had his little spurt, he settled down into easy going.
In an hour Lucy was ten miles or more from home, and farther down in the valley than she had ever been.

In fact, she had never before been down the long slope to the valley floor.

How changed the horizon became! The monuments loomed up now, dark, sentinel-like, and strange.
The first one, a great red rock, seemed to her some five miles away.