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and saddle it. I figure if he wants me to race, he can supply the mount."
    "You do make me smile, sir—the way you talk."
    "Uh-uh. So far I've only managed to do it twice. But I aim to keep on trying until..." He was staring at her mouth so intently she had to bite her lower lip to stop its trembling. "Until I can get you to smile at me again."
    She jerked her gaze away from his. But a moment later she was trying to look at him out the corner of her eye.
    Today he was dressed more properly for cycling, in blue knee breeches, yellow gaiters, and a seal-brown corduroy reefer jacket. The thin velvet breeches fit tight across the muscles of his thighs, which looked strong from busting broncos and trailing cattle. She thought that riding an ordinary probably seemed tame stuff to such a man.
    There were so many things she wanted to say to him; so many questions crowded her mouth. But the one that fell out made her flush with the stupidity of it. "Is it true what they say about Montana, that a person can ride from one end to the other of it without crossing a fence?"
    He laughed, as she had known he would. But she didn't mind, for she liked his laugh. "I suppose you might come upon a drift fence or two here and there," he said. "And there are some mighty big mountains that'll give you pause."
    She had read about such mountains, but she had never been able to draw a picture of them in her mind. She had known only the low bluffs and drumlins that rose above the salt marshes around Boston.
    They had reached one of the busiest thoroughfares, and he gave his attention to the traffic now, so she was able to study him. He was so large he seemed to fill all of the gig's seat. There was a joyous shine to him, like a brand-new copper penny. "What brings you all this way to Boston, Mr. McQueen?"
    He turned his head and his gaze met hers. She had forgotten that his eyes were such a deep, clear blue. The Montana sky would be that blue, she thought.
    "My mother was a long time dying," he said. "She asked to see me before she went, and so I came. I'll be leaving again, though, come the end of the week."
    "I'm sorry," she said, and then added hastily, lest he misunderstand her, "Sorry, I mean, about your mother's death."
    A shadow crossed his face, like clouds scudding across the sun. "I left her and Boston when I was seventeen, the same age as you, and I wasn't always very good about writing."
    "Did you run away?"
    He cast a glance at her, then made a clicking noise in his mouth, urging the horse around an ice wagon that had rolled into their path. "In a manner of speaking, yeah, I guess I did. I wanted to see the elephant." At her quizzical look, he laughed. "I wanted to see the marvels of the great Wild West. Indians and buffalo and grizzly bears and rivers of gold."
    How she yearned to see such marvels herself. Yet it all seemed so far beyond her reach and doomed forever to remain so. "And was he as wonderful as you thought he would be— your elephant?"
    She watched him as he took a moment to think about it; there was an excitement about him, a shining, that stirred something deep within her.
    "There's a bigness about Montana that tends to frighten a lot of people. But it's not so big you can't find what you're looking for, if you know what that something is." His eyes met hers, and the stirring within her quickened. "Sometimes, Miss Kennicutt, all a body needs is a place to run to."
    She didn't know what she was looking for. The missing things, she supposed, but she couldn't have defined them, even to herself. She only knew that in this one moment she felt alive. The wind was stiff with the bite of salt in it, and late winter sunlight dappled the shop awnings and made the windows shimmer, and she was going to see a bicycle race in the company of a man, a cowboy.
    He pulled the horse to a halt in the middle of the street, ignoring the shouts that came from the carriages and wagons stalled behind them. He turned to her, and although his eyes