"It _is_ a game," he agreed after a while, "just like the pelicans. It isn't considered sporting for sanderlings to get more than three inches away from the edge of the wash; or for a duck to dive unless he actually has to. It must be a game; for they certainly aren't catching anything."
At this moment the sanderlings as though at a signal sprang into the air, wheeled back and forth with instantaneous precision, and departed. The ducks, too, dove, and came up only outside the surf.
"Good little sportsmen," laughed Keith; "they play the game for its own sake. They don't like an audience."
After a few miles they came to a cliff reaching down to the beach and completely barring the way. Off shore were rocky islets covered with seals and sea lions. A lone blue heron stood atop a sand dune, absolutely motionless.
"I don't know where we are, or how we get out," said Keith, "but I'm going to take that chap there as a sign post," and he turned his horse directly toward the heron.
Sure enough, a track led them through the sand, and by a zigzag route to the top of the knoll that had barred their way along the shore. They came to an edge. Before them lay an arm of the sea, sweeping and eddying with a strong incoming tide. Over the way stood a great mountain, like a sentinel. Far to their right the arm widened. There was a glimpse of sparkling blue, and of the pearl of far-off hills, and the haze of a distant dim peak.
"It's the Golden Gate!" cried Keith in sudden enlightenment.
He told her that the mountain over the way must be Tamalpais; that the pearl-gray, far-off hills must be Contra Costa; that the distant dim peak was undoubtedly Mount Diabolo. She repeated the syllables after him softly, charmed by their music.
Simultaneously they discovered that they were hungry. The wind whipped in from the sea. An outpost tent or so marked the distant invisible city over the hills. Keith turned his horse's head toward them. They drove back across what are now the Presidio hills.
But in a hollow they came upon another ranch house, like the first--low, white, red roofed, covered with vines. Keith insisted on driving to it. A number of saddled horses dozed before the door, a half-dozen dogs sprawled in the dust, fowls picked their way between the horses' legs or over the dogs' recumbent forms. At the sound of wheels several people came from the shadow of the porch into the open. They proved to be Spanish Californians dressed in the flat sombreros, the short velvet jackets, the slashed trousers, and soft leather _zapatos_. The men, handsome, lithe, indolent, pressed around the wheels of the buggy, showing their white teeth in pleasant smiles.