Douglas rode up to the cabin and, dismounting, knocked at the door.

It was opened by Elijah Nelson, his big bulk silhouetted in the door-frame.

"Good-evening!" said Douglas.

"Good-evening!" returned the Mormon.

"Did Judith Spencer come through this way?"

Nelson shrugged his shoulders. "I don't care to hold converse with any one from Lost Chief."

Douglas moistened his wind-fevered lips. "I'm not trying to hold converse with you. My sister has run away from home. I've lost her trail and I'm scared about her. I won't stop a minute if you'll just answer my question."

A woman pushed up beside Elijah. "Who is it, Pa? For pity's sake, young man, come in! It's a fearful cold night and this open door is freezing the whole house."

Elijah stood back and Douglas strode into the kitchen. Several children were sitting around the supper table. Nelson repeated Douglas' query to his wife, adding, "He's the young man who brought the preacher into Lost Chief and who called me a bastard American."

The woman stared at Douglas. He was haggard and unshaved. Nevertheless, standing, with his broad shoulders back, his blue eyes wide and steady yet full of a consuming anxiety, his youth was very appealing.

"Have you been out long?" she asked.

"Since Sunday dawn."

"She's your sister, you say?"

Douglas looked down at the woman. She could not have been much over thirty and her brown eyes were kindly. "She's only a foster sister," he replied, his low voice a little husky. "I—I—" he hesitated, then gave way for a moment. "If I'd stayed at home as her mother wanted me to, instead of bringing the preacher in, it never would have happened! Religion! Look what it's brought me and Judith!"

"Religion never brought anything but good to any one," said Elijah Nelson. "It's religion now that makes me allow you within my doors."

Douglas gave the Mormon a quick glance. Somewhere back of his anxiety it occurred to him that he would like to ask this man some of the questions that had troubled him for years. But now he said urgently to the woman, "If Judith was here, for God's sake, tell me! She must not try to cross Black Devil Pass."

The woman turned to Elijah. "Tell him, Pa!"

Elijah scratched his head, eying Douglas keenly the while. "Peter Knight told me something about you. You don't seem to have been tarred with the same brush as the rest of the Gentiles in Lost Chief. That isn't saying I excuse the way you talked to me up at your chapel, but I guess you're to be trusted as far as women are concerned. The girl came in here last night. She was pretty well tuckered but as mad as hops. She told me that Saturday night she had a violent quarrel with John Spencer and that she fled from home in a burst of anger that was still on her when she got here. She's headed for the Pass and the railroad beyond and nothing that I know of can stop her. My wife and I did all we could to make her give up the idea but she was sure she could make it. And I almost believe she can! She's as strong as a young mountain lion: the way God intended women to be. She stayed here all night and got away about an hour before dawn. We outfitted her good. She thought maybe she could make through the Pass by to-night, but I doubt it. Snow is awful deep up on Black Devil. We've been looking for her back all day."

Douglas drew a long breath. "Thank you, Mr. Nelson!" he said, and started for the door.

"Wait! Wait!" cried Mrs. Nelson. "You must have some supper and you must rest. You look terrible!"

Douglas shook his head. "Every minute counts. I'm not tired, only terribly worried. I couldn't rest."

Nelson walked over to the door deliberately, and put a big hand on Doug's shoulder. "You fill yourself with some hot food, Spencer. You know better than to tackle this job empty. That girl is in a desperate frame of mind. You are going to have a struggle with her, if you do overtake her. You must be cool and save your mind and body. How did she come to be in such, a state of mind?"

"She wasn't desperate," said Mrs. Nelson, unexpectedly. "She was sort of—of wild. I can't just find the word for it. But lots of young women are like that now-a-days."

Douglas looked at her curiously. Some phrase of Peter's, half forgotten, came back to him. "Revolt," he muttered. "Revolt, that's it."

The woman nodded. "Yes, revolt's the word."

Elijah shook Doug's shoulder. "How many horses have you?"

"Two."

"I'll feed 'em. Go sit down to that table and let my wife fix you up."

Douglas slowly pulled off his gloves, and his voice broke boyishly as he said, "You folks are awful kind."

"Yes, I've sometimes suspected that us Mormons was almost human beings," grunted Elijah as he pulled on his mackinaw.

Doug's cracked lips managed a shadow of his old whimsical smile. Mrs. Nelson heaped his plate and filled his cup with scalding coffee. Then she shooed the children to bed in the next room and, returning, looked down at Douglas half tenderly.

"She's a splendid big thing, that girl of yours. If I was a man I'd be plumb crazy about her. Has to be something fine in a girl to go crazy mad, just the way she was. It wasn't all about your father. It had heaped up for years. Though undoubtedly it was your father started her off this weather."

Elijah came in and sat down to his interrupted meal. "Good horses you've got," he said. "But you've worked them hard."

"Will you sell me some oats?" asked Douglas.

Elijah nodded. "I'll fix you up. Do you know how to get to the Pass?"

"No; I've never crossed, even in summer."

"Well, I can direct you, though I've never made it myself in winter. After you get over the Pass and into the Basin it will be easy going and you can get fodder there. A Mormon friend of mine is in the Basin this winter with sheep. I told Judith that and exactly how to get there."

"Was she in bad trim?" asked Douglas abruptly.

"No. A little used up for lack of sleep, that was all," replied Elijah.

Mrs. Nelson suddenly chuckled. "My, she was mad! It did me good to see her."

Her husband looked at her curiously. "How was that, Ma?"

"It's the way I've wanted to feel, lots of times," said Mrs. Nelson. "Go on with your directions, Pa. You wouldn't understand in a hundred years."

Elijah snorted, then went on. "There's no trail. But if you reach the summit, get a line on a bare patch in the middle of the basin, that's the lake, and the highest peak across the basin. It's got the mark of a big cross on it. You can't miss it. If you keep on this line, it will bring you out at Bowdin's sheep ranch. I don't know whether the snows are as bad on the other side of Black Devil as they are on this. Johnson's Basin drops down to about three thousand feet elevation and there's not enough snow in the basin itself to stop sheep grazing. But the climb down is something awful, even in summer. Ma, you put up a bundle of grub."

"I've got grub for a week, thanks!" exclaimed Douglas. Then he asked Elijah, hesitatingly, "Will you tell me why you are so kind to me?"

"As I said, it's my religion."

Douglas stared at his host's kindly face. "I'm dog sorry," he said, "for what I called you. But, how was I to know? I've been brought up to hate Mormons."

Elijah nodded. "I guess we're square. What kind of a man is Fowler?"

"I like him. But I don't know whether he's the man for the job I set him, or not. But he's going to stay," lips tightening. "I'll see to that! Have you always been a Mormon, Mr. Nelson?"

"Brought up in it. And I've brought my children up in it. Judith told us about the rotten trick they did you over in Lost Chief. What are you going to do about it?"

"Get them!" replied Douglas. "That is, after I find Judith. I think I know the men who did it, and the sooner they get out of our valley, the more comfortable they'll be and so will I."

"But where is that poor old man?" cried Nelson. "Have you looked for him?"

"I was trying to get a line on him from Scott Parsons when her mother brought word Judith was gone." Douglas paused and gave Elijah a straight look. "I wouldn't stop to look for any one on earth, if Judith needed me."

"Judith can take care of herself better than that old man," insisted Elijah.

"Nothing to it!" grunted Douglas. "He's been in the cow country forty years. Not but what I know it was a frightful thing to leave him. But it can't be helped."

"What shall you do about a church now?" asked Mr. Nelson.

"Build it again for the hounds to burn again! If I believed in a God I'd say he was off his job as far as I'm concerned."

"Humph!" exclaimed Elijah. "If I don't miss my guess, the Almighty is directing your business these days as he never has before. You are just about doing what He says and flattering yourself it's your own plan. God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform."

"I wish I could believe it," muttered Douglas, starting for the door.

"Now, I shifted saddle and pack for you to two horses of mine!" said Elijah. "If you find that girl, bring her back here. I want to have some talk with you both. You can pay me rent for 'em, so don't waste your breath arguing."

"Well, whether you are a Sioux or a Mormon," exclaimed Douglas, "you sure are white!"

Elijah grinned broadly. "Well, that's a real concession for a Gentile! Be sure you stop here on the way out."

It was Douglas' turn to grin. "We'll sure be glad to head straight for here. But I'll warn you now. You can't make Mormons of us!"

"I'm not a-going to try. But I want to say a few things to you. No harm in that, is there?"

"None at all!" Douglas shook hands with his host, then turned to Mrs. Nelson. "I'm sure obliged to you," he said.

"That's nothing. But look, Mr. Spencer, don't you be too sure you're going to bring that girl back with you, even if you overtake her."

Douglas nodded. "I know," he agreed huskily, "I've got my work cut out for me." Then he went out into the starlight.

Elijah followed. "The moon will be up by the time you need it. Follow trail up to the timber line. Skirt the timber line till you reach the first shoulder of Black Devil. After that, God help you! The horse you are on is named Tom. If you aren't back in five days, I'll go over to Lost Chief and get help to look for you."

"Thanks," said Douglas, and he rode away.

Warmed, refreshed, and with hope shadowing his anxiety, Douglas turned the horses southward. Tom horse was a big, broad-hoofed brute, hard-bitted and not at all enthusiastic about his prospective trip. But —he was a stronger animal than Justus and Douglas pushed him sharply through the snow.

The trail through the fields for three or four miles was easy to find in the starlight. The valley narrowed as it rose and finally Lost Chief and Black Devil thrust foot to foot in a narrow canyon. Douglas did not enter the canyon but twined upward to the right along the timber line that clothed the ankles of Black Devil. The moon had not yet risen when the timber disappeared at the foot of the first shoulder. Douglas pulled up the panting horses, turned back to the wind and rested for a few moments, then put Tom to the climb. The snow was without crust but it was knee-deep and Tom didn't like it. He floundered and snorted, but Douglas spurred him relentlessly and they crested the shoulder without pause. Here, however, Doug decided to wait for the moon.

He moved into the shelter of a rock heap, for the wind was huge, and, beating his arms across his chest, waited with what patience he could muster. Where was she now? Could even her splendid courage stand up against the eerie loneliness. If only he could see her now, returning defeated, though still defiant. But he knew that he would not meet her so. She would not give up while she had strength to pursue the adventure.

There was no view of the peak from this spot. Before him lifted a dark, shadowy wall, sloping interminably to the remote heavens. To the east, Lost Chief Range was silhouetted against a faint glow that told of the coming moon. To the west was a chaos of unfamiliar peaks. When the dusk of the mountain-slope before him turned to radiant silver, Douglas started the horses on and spurred Tom relentlessly. And if he had known how to pray, he told himself, he would have asked the Almighty to give him strength for the tremendous venture which lay before him.



CHAPTER XVII

BLACK DEVIL PASS

"They can stand the curse of being women, but they're revolting against men's being stupid."

—The Mormon's Wife.

Douglas spurred Tom relentlessly until the snow was belly-deep and both animals began to fight obstinately to turn back. Douglas dismounted and fastened the horses to a scrub cedar. Then he wallowed forward afoot to break trail. The wind increased constantly with the elevation, but even higher than its eerie note sounded the wild call of a solitary coyote. Douglas heard the call but remotely. His mind was fastened on Judith fighting as he was fighting. He beat trail until his lungs protested, then he brought the horses forward, halted, and beat trail again. His nose was bleeding slightly when he at last won to the crest of the first shoulder.

This was blown clear of snow and he mounted and rode well up on the second shoulder before the horses again balked. Lost Chief Range now had dropped so that dimly beyond he could glimpse the Indian peaks. The strange peaks to the right were subsiding to be dwarfed by still other peaks against which the stars floated, pendulous and brilliant. And still Black Devil's top was invisible beyond the terraced ridge that opposed the little cavalcade.

When, after infinite effort, Douglas surmounted the third shoulder, he paused, appalled by the loneliness and danger of the position. The ridge had narrowed until its top offered barely a foothold, with sides dropping to unthinkable depths. The snow had blown clear and the wind was almost insupportable. A cedar stood before them like a sentinal guarding the eternal loneliness beyond. Tom made for this as if it were his last hope. As the horses brought up in the shelter of the tree, Douglas gave a hoarse cry of relief and dismounted. Some charred sticks and the remains of a cottontail had not yet blown away. Douglas examined the traces of the hasty camp, then chuckled.

"Safe so far! Some girl, my Judith!"

Then his jaw stiffened and he set the horses to the last shoulder below the Pass. Groaning, trembling, bloody flanks heaving, fighting constantly to turn, Tom, when Douglas sought to force him through the drift that topped the shoulder, deliberately lay down. Douglas freed himself from the stirrups and jerked the horse to his feet.

"I wouldn't own an ornery, unwilling brute like you, for a ranch!" he panted. "Do you think I'm enjoying this, that we are a bunch of dudes on a summer outing? I'll get angry at you in a moment, fellow!"

The pack-horse had embraced the opportunity to fall asleep. Tom, violently affronted by Doug's tirade, did his not inconsiderable best to kick his mate. Then he snapped at Douglas, who promptly cuffed him on the nose. Tom reared, fell, and began to roll down the terrible slope. The pack-horse did not waken nor stir. Doug flung himself after Tom. Slipping, falling, rolling, he finally caught the reins, and though Tom dragged him fifty yards on downward, he at last braced his spurs against a boulder, the reins held and Tom brought up, trembling and coughing. And now horse and man could only stand for a long time struggling for breath. When his numbing hands gave warning that his rest period must cease, Douglas, with the reins caught over his elbow, began a fight back to the crest of the ridge, a fight to which the previous portion of the trip had been as nothing. When they reached the led horse, still sleeping with his nose between his fore legs, there was no more fight left in Tom, and Douglas dropped into the snow to rest.

The moon was setting when he led his little train through the gigantic drift to the long slope which lifted to the Pass. There was no snow here. The slope, as far as Doug could discern in the failing light, was a glare of rough ice. Over this he dared not urge the horses until daylight. He looked at his watch. It was nearly five o'clock. He fastened the horses to the only cedar in sight, then stood in the wind debating with himself.

He was very much exhausted and the rare air and the intense cold were giving him no chance to recoup. This was no place to make camp. The tiny cedar offered neither shelter from the wind nor an adequate amount of fuel. And up here, in this hostile loneliness, his anxiety over Judith returned threefold. Strong as she was, clever as she was, she was as open to accidents as he. Supposing her horses had slipped on this ice and had gone over the black edge! Douglas dropped to his hands and knees and crept out upon the glassy surface. A hundred yards of this and he brought to pause before a giant boulder beside which grew several dwarf cedars. He drew his ax from its sheath and after long effort with his stiffened fingers, he got the green wood to burning. Dawn, about seven, found him napping against the warm face of the rock. He brought the horses up to the camp, fed them and himself, and as the sun shot over the Indian Range, then prepared to lead the horses onward.

The crest of Black Devil now lifted immediately above him. Just below the crest, a ledge broad enough for a pack team led straight into the blue of the sky. To the right the dark wall of the crest. To the left a sheer drop where the canyon between Lost Chief Range and Black Devil yawned hideously. This ledge, this narrow, painful crossing, made the Pass.

Douglas drew his ax and prepared to roughen a trail over the ice for the horses. But to his unspeakable delight, he had not gone far when he discovered that another ax and other horses had gone over the ice before him. He was grinning cheerfully as he sheathed his ax and took Tom's reins in hand.

It was noon when he reached the Pass. Sheer red walls to the right, rising to the hovering top of Black Devil. Still the sickening canyon depths to the left. To the south, myriad peaks, a whole world of peaks, snow-covered, serene. Far, far below, a blurred green valley, with a tiny white spot in its center. Johnson's Basin. The slope south from the Pass was very steep and deep with snow, but Douglas saw Judith's trail zig-zagging to a low shoulder round which it disappeared.

He fed the horses, ate some biscuits and bacon, both frozen, and started downward. Shortly snow began to fall, but he had no difficulty in following trail until mid-afternoon. Then he paused on the low shoulder. There were scrub pines in which Judith had made a camp. The snow had thickened until Doug could see scarcely ten feet ahead. He was utterly weary and very cold. He knew that he ought to go into camp for the night but he could not. He tied the horses beneath the trees, a grateful, windless haven to the poor brutes, and went slowly on to reconnoiter.

Judith's tracks continued abruptly down the slope. Douglas followed for a few feet, then stopped. A horse had fallen here and rolled down the steep left wall. He dropped to his knees and followed the wide, snow-packed trail. He had not far to go. From the snow drifted over a rock protruded a horse's hoof. Doug swept the body free of snow. It was old Buster, with his right fore leg broken and a bullet wound in his head. Hot tears scalded Doug's wind-tortured eyes. After a moment of search for further details of the catastrophe, he crawled up the wall again and, after a frantic hunt, found a blurred single horse trail leading on from the spot whence Buster had slipped. He went back for his own horses, mounted Tom and pushed on downward.

But he could not continue long. It was soon dusk and he dared not risk losing Judith's tracks. When he came upon the next cedar clump, clinging precariously to the mountainside, he dismounted. Under the shelter of the trees, he fastened the horses. He trampled the snow for his fire-place and chopped a night's supply of wood. After he had eaten a hot supper, he wrapped himself in his blankets and huddled over the fire, consumed by anxiety.

The wind rushed by the cedars without pause. The hard, dry pellets of snow rattled on the trees. The horses, their chins hung with icicles, stood with bowed heads, motionless.

All of Doug's life passed in review before his sleepless eyes. He could not recall when he had not been shaping his days around Judith. Even when as children they had lived the snarling life of young pups, she had been the center of his universe. He wondered if love came to many men as it had come to him. He had not observed it in any other man in Lost Chief. Perhaps Peter had cared so. Perhaps in the outside world it was not infrequent. But whether it was a common sort of love or not, he could not picture himself without Judith in his life. If he should find her dead, farther down on this ghastly mountainside, he knew that the light and warmth within him would go out and that he never would finish the journey.

One by one he went over the steps of the past year that had culminated in this trip over Black Devil Pass. He realized that every step had been the result of his own years of mental conflict. Yet he could not see how he could have failed to take each step as he had taken it. His mind mysteriously refused to present an alternative. And, thinking thus, he was conscious of a sense of spiritual helplessness as if he were being borne on and on by forces quite beyond his control. And there came to him a sudden and shattering conviction that this terrible night of loneliness had been inevitable since the day of his birth. Call it Fate, he told himself, call it Destiny, call it what we might, something stronger than his own will had shaped his days toward this awful expedition. Awful, he thought, not from the physical aspect—he had endured as much in other ways—as from the quality of the events that had brought the expedition about. It was all wrong that Judith should have been in the state of mind that made it possible for her to put herself to such a wild flight. Revolt, the Mormon's wife had said it was. Revolt against what? Surely against something stupendous, something that a man was powerless to help her to free herself from or to bear.

Ah, Judith! Judith! Judith all fire, all wistfulness, all strength and beauty! What was he, after all, to hope to claim her, or even having won her, how was he to keep her? How was he to keep within his ken that restless, soaring spirit? What could he give her that would satisfy, and hold her? For the first time in many years, Douglas could have wept; wept for very sadness that Judith should be so lonely and so wistful.

How long he sat shivering with his burning eyes on the fire, Douglas did not know. He was roused by a faint cry above the wind. At first he thought it was a coyote. But when it repeated, he started to his feet and concentrated in an agony of attention on the sound. Once more it came, longdrawn, troubled, the howl of a dog. Doug dropped the blankets and strode from the shelter of the trees to deliver a long coo-ee. The wind was against him. There was no response.

He hurriedly dragged his entire supply of firewood before the shelter and set it to blazing. Then he plunged on foot downward through the wind-swept, snow-driven darkness.

It was a terrible journey. He slipped and fell so often and so far that when the light behind him dwindled to a faint point, he dared continue no farther. Standing waist-deep in snow, he whistled and called. But the cyclone wind drove the sound back into his teeth. Sick at soul, he prepared to turn back. He beat his arms across his chest, stamped his feet, slipped, and once more rolled downward. He brought up with a crash in a cedar clump. A dog barked and threw himself against Doug with a snarl that changed at once to a whine of joy.

"Wolf Cub! Wolf Cub! Where is she?"

He grasped the dog's collar. It was very dark beneath the trees. Wolf Cub led him forward for a few feet. He stumbled over a soft, huddled form. He rolled to his knees and pulled a blanket aside. Judith!—her head pillowed on her knees.

"Judith! Judith!" No reply. Doug put the blanket over her again and, with hands like frozen clods, jerked out his sheath ax and with infinite difficulty lopped off a cedar bough and got a fire to going. Sifting snow pellets, and the little wild mare's beautiful anxious eyes and drifted forelock, then that form beneath the blanket. Douglas heaped the fire high, then hurled the blanket away.

"Judith! Judith! Judith!" Sobbing, he crouched beside her, gathered her in his arms, laid her cold face in his breast, tried to enwrap her body with his.

"Judith! Judith!"

Wolf Cub whined in eager circles. Douglas laid his cheek against her lips. A faint warmth. He shook her, frantically, and beat her hands with his. Then he rose and balanced her on her feet. She hung limply in his arms. He huddled her before the fire again and forced some whiskey down her throat. He manipulated her inert body until when he lifted her again onto her feet she was able to stand. Still half in his arms. Then he forced her to stumble back and forth beside the fire.

"Judith! Judith! Judith!"

"It's you, Doug!" weakly and with bewildered eyes.

"O Jude, how could you! How could you!"

"Poor Buster—dead!" muttered Judith.

"I know! I found him. You must keep going, Judith. Lean on me but keep going."

But circulation was returning to her strong young body. Shortly she was able to stand alone and to ask Doug where he had come from.

"My camp is up the mountain a ways. Why didn't you have a fire?"

"Lost my pack when I lost Buster. Lost my match-safe when I fell with the little wild mare this afternoon."

"I'm going to take you back up to my camp, Judith."

"I don't think I can make it, Doug. It would have to be a foot climb."

"You must make it. There is nothing at all here to keep us both from freezing to death. We'll start now, while I can still see the fire I left up there."

"I can't, Doug! You bring your camp down here."

"This is no shelter at all. I'm in the big cedars above here. You've got to have some hot food right off. We will leave the little wild mare here until morning."

With Wolf Cub hanging to their heels, they started the upward climb. Judith gave to the last ounce of her depleted strength. They reached the still glowing ashes of Doug's fire on their hands and knees, and lay beside it till the warning chill brought Douglas to his feet. He chopped more wood, rekindled the fire in the center of the camp, and established Judith beside it on some blankets. Then he prepared some coffee and bacon for her. She ate ravenously. Douglas watched her with satisfaction radiating from every line of his snow-burned face.

"Are you warm now, Jude?" he asked her when she had begun on her second cup of coffee.

"Well, not exactly warm, but I sure am thawing!"

"As soon as you are warm, I'll let you sleep. That's right, let old Wolf Cub snuggle up against you. He's better than a hot-water bottle. Are you surprised to see me, Judith?"

She looked up at him through weary eyes that still held the old unquenchable fires in their depths.

"I didn't know. If you had gone off on a long hunt for the sky pilot, you wouldn't have heard yet that I was gone. Did you find him?"

"I never even got to look for him. I was down at Inez' trying to sweat some truth out of Scott when your mother came in with word you were gone. Peter and I started after you at once."

"Peter! Where is he?"

"Jude, let's keep our stories until morning. Things look different, then. And you are all in."

"So are you!"

"I'm not as bad off as you. Let me tuck you up, dear. When you've had a sleep, you can give me my turn."

Too done up to protest, Judith allowed Douglas to wrap her in blankets and, with the Wolf Cub snuggled against her back, she dropped into slumber. Douglas set himself to the task of keeping the fire going. The snow ceased at midnight and the cold grew more intense. Douglas chopped wood or walked up and down before the fire to fight off the snow stupor which constantly menaced him. When the lethargy was too heavy to be controlled by exercise alone, he stooped over Judith and, lifting the corner of the blanket which covered her face, he would gaze at her with such joy and thankfulness as he never before had experienced. Whatever the future might bring forth, he had her safe and warm for to-night. And he wished that he believed in a God that he might thank Him!



CHAPTER XVIII

ELIJAH NELSON'S RANCH

"Call it Fate, call it Destiny, something stronger than my own will is shaping my destiny."

—Douglas Spencer.

At dawn Judith stirred, blinked at Douglas, and sat up, staring. Her eyes were bloodshot and deep sunk in her head, but her look was full of energy, nevertheless. Douglas was standing on the opposite side of the fire.

"Have you been up all night?" she demanded.

"Had to keep the fire," he mumbled, swaying as he spoke.

Judith crawled out of the blankets, took Doug by the arm, and pushed him down in the warm nest she had left. Then she covered him carefully.

"It's my turn now," she said.

He slept until noon. When he woke, Judith was making coffee, and the little wild mare was munching oats with the other horses. The Wolf Cub was gnawing on a bone, and the sun sifted brilliantly through the cedars. Douglas got to his feet stiffly and Judith looked up at him from her cooking with a smile.

"Nothing like having your breakfast served immediately on waking," said Douglas.

"Come and eat, Doug. We must be on our way." Judith poured a tin cup of coffee and offered Douglas a bacon sandwich as she spoke.

"You shouldn't have let me sleep so long. A couple of hours would have kept me going the rest of the day."

"You talk as foolish as old Johnny!" exclaimed Judith. "You were in almost as bad shape as I was, and two hours' sleep would have been a mere aggravation to me. Will you let me have enough grub to see me down to the Bowdins' ranch, Doug?"

"No, I won't," replied Douglas succinctly, bracing himself for battle as he spoke.

"Don't let's quarrel, Doug." Judith kept her eyes on the fire. "I haven't any intention of going back to Lost Chief. I've broken away and I shall stay away."

"I don't blame you for feeling that way, Jude, but surely you can see that this is no way to go."

Judith set her fine jaw firmly. Finally she said, "Where did you pick up my trail?"

"Where you left the stage road. Jude, did you know that old Johnny gave Dad a nasty one above the knee?"

"No! Old Johnny came to my rescue, but I didn't think he could hit a canyon wall. Good old Johnny! What became of him?"

Douglas moistened his lips. "He followed my father to the half-way house. Dad was all in. Couldn't even build himself a fire. Johnny wouldn't do a thing for him. He went outside and sat down on the doorstep with my shot-gun across his knees; every time Dad yelled at him he said he was saving Jude for Douglas. The last of the afternoon Peter and I came up and found old Johnny there."

"Good old Johnny!" said Judith again.

Douglas nodded, hesitated, then said. "He was asleep and we couldn't wake him up."

Judith's eyes suddenly filled with horror. "You couldn't wake him up? You mean—"

Again Douglas nodded. "He was gone, poor old Johnny. For you and me. I came on after you, alone."

Judith twisted her hands together. "But dead, Doug! And in such a simple way! O the poor little old chap! I can't forgive myself, Douglas!"

"It's the way he'd like to have gone. You are not to blame."

"O, yes, I am. I should have stopped and sent him home. But I was beside myself, Doug,—O, you don't know! you can't know!"

"You're not to blame yourself about Johnny, I tell you."

"Now I never do want to go back! You'll just have to grub-stake me, Doug. Please!"

Douglas pushed his hair back from his forehead. If only she would not plead with him! She never had done that. He did not believe that he could stand out against it.

"You mustn't think of going on alone, Jude," he said.

"Then you come as far as Bowdins' with me and get rested up for your trip back."

"I want you to come back with me," repeated Doug.

"No!" said Judith. "I'm never going back to Lost Chief!"

"Then come as far as the Mormon's. Get rested and get some clothes together and I'll take you out to Mountain City, and I'll loan you enough money to live on while you get a job, or I'll put you through college. Either you want. You've done a great stunt, Judith, crossing Black Devil in winter. But putting over a stunt isn't necessarily acting with judgment."

"How could I act with judgment, under the circumstances?" demanded Judith.

Douglas looked at her with passionate earnestness.

"Judith," he said, "you must believe that I'm not criticizing you. I'm just trying to help you do the wise thing."

"Why can't I go on across the Basin and get the A.B. railroad at Doty's?" asked Judith.

Douglas looked down the terrible mountainside. "We aren't equipped for it, Jude."

She drew a deep breath. "I don't want to go back where I have to breathe the same air he does."

"Judith, what did he do?" Doug's lips were stiff and his eyes contracted as if with pain.

"I didn't give him a chance to do anything. I don't want even to talk about it."

Douglas sat silent for a moment; then he said huskily, "I'm ashamed of him."

Suddenly Judith put her hands before her eyes and began to sob. Douglas groaned. He put his arms about her and presently she leaned against him and wept with complete abandonment. Finally she began to talk.

"He's always worried me, a little—but I wasn't really afraid of him. I don't want to think about him—or talk about him—to anybody. Up till Saturday night he was just one of the hard things that heckled me—I didn't have anybody to go to. If I went to you, you'd want to—marry me. And—Inez—Inez has gone back on all the ideas she got me to believe. She's gone—and fallen in love—with Peter! She—she told me not long ago that she was going to do everything she could to make him marry her.—Just as soon as something touched her selfish interests she went to pieces.—I want to get away from Lost Chief!"

Douglas patted her shoulder in silence. It was inexpressibly sweet to have her there.

"A girl has a brain, as well as a man," she went on. "She doesn't want to be just a servant to a rough old rancher. She wants to live by her brain as well as he does. What's the use of a woman being fine if that's all her fineness comes to? You can say she hands it on to her children. But she don't. It's something she acquires and it's lost—in the scrubbing pail."

Douglas listened with the whole of his mind. Judith's sobs had ceased now, and she went on, slowly. "It's not that I'm against children. I'd love to have a half a dozen babies. But what I am against is giving all that is in me—the brain side of me, to something that demands only a small part of my brain. I want a life like a man's and a woman's too, that makes me give all, all. Surely I can find a place somewhere where I can give that."

Douglas drew an uncertain breath. The Mormon woman had known. A sense of his own inadequacy settled on him like a cloud.

"I know you think I'm a fool. Yet you have big dreams for yourself or you wouldn't have felt as you have about the preacher. One has to have an ideal to live by. I thought Inez had given me one and—" with a sob that shook her whole fine body—"I don't see how it can work out!"

"I suppose," said Douglas, in his gentle voice, "that folks have been trying out Inez' idea ever since love began, and the homely, every-day details of living make it impossible."

Judith drew a long breath and was silent.

"And so," said Douglas, "you are through with love and marriage. Yet no human being can be happy without both. Life is like that."

Judith sprang to her feet and Douglas rose with her. She began to walk rapidly up and down before the fire. It was so evident that a tempest was raging within her that Douglas watched her with astonishment and dismay. The sunshine flickered gloriously through the cedar branches. Wolf Cub gave cry after a coyote. It might have been a moment or a lifetime to the young rider before Judith halted in front of him. Her tear-stained face was tense. Her wide eyes burned with a light he never before had seen in them.

"And if," she exclaimed, "I told you that I loved you; that for years I had fought off a love for you that was like a burning flame in my heart; if I told you that to me you are as beautiful as all the lovers in the world; but that I never, never would give myself to you in marriage, what would you say?"

Douglas' gloved hands clenched and unclenched, as he fought for self control. After a moment he managed to return, steadily, "I'd ask you why?"

The tensity of Judith's expression did not relax. "I've told you why. I cannot bear to think of killing love by marriage. And it always works so. Always. And yet, O Douglas, I love you, love you!"

Douglas threw back his head with a sudden breath, swept Judith into his arms and kissed her, kissed her with all the ardor of years of repression. Judith clung to him as if she could not let him go. And yet, when he lifted his face from hers, she said, none the less firmly because her voice was husky:

"But, Douglas, I won't marry you!"

Douglas lifted his chin. "Perhaps you won't, my dearest! I'm not going to let that thought spoil the big moment of my life."

He put his hands on her shoulders and looked at her, at the long brilliant face beneath the beaver cap, at the fine steel slenderness of her, and then he said in his low-voiced way:

"O Judith! Judith! why didn't you tell me, long ago!"

"Because nothing would satisfy you but marriage," replied Judith, with a half sob.

Douglas smiled wistfully. "But I haven't changed! Why did you tell me now?"

"I didn't want to! I didn't mean to! But I couldn't help it. You saved my life, Doug! It ought to belong to you, but O, I can't give it to you! I must go on. I must find out what is the thing I'm meant to do. I must!"

Douglas turned from her troubled face to gaze at the mad descent that must be made before Johnson's Basin could be won. Then he put up his hand and turned her face to follow his glance.

"Judith, do you think that I can let you go down there? If it was impossible before, think how I feel about it now I know that you love me. Somehow we have got to compromise on this thing, my dearest."

Judith clung to him. "I don't want to leave you, Douglas. But I can't go back to Lost Chief. I can't!"

Douglas held her close and for a long moment there was no sound in the wide solitudes except the Wolf Cub's faint hunting-cry.

At last Douglas said slowly, "If I give you my word that I'll take you out to Mountain City as soon as I can outfit, will you come back to Nelson's with me? Look at me, Jude!"

Judith lifted her eyes and searched Doug's face long and wistfully. Then she said, brokenly, "Yes, I'll come, if you will give me your promise. Not because I think it's sensible but because, now I've given away this much, I don't want to be separated from you till—till I've unpacked my heart to you!"

"And after you've done that," asked Douglas, "do you think I can ever let you go?"

"But I thought you were not going to spoil this moment by arguing about marriage!" exclaimed Judith.

"I'll not!" cried Douglas. "Truly, I'll not."

The Wolf Cub trotted importantly into the camp with a scrawny jack-rabbit dragging against his shaggy gray breast. Douglas gave a quick look at the sky.

"Judith, either we must put this place into shape for a night camp or we must strike out at once so as to get over the Pass to-night."

"We'd better break camp," said Judith. "It's getting frightfully cold and there's mighty little fodder left."

They fell to work swiftly, and before the Wolf Cub had half finished his meal they were on the march. Douglas led on Tom, followed by his pack-horse. Judith followed on the little wild mare. The crest of Black Devil hung over their heads, the purple of his front crosshatched by myriad crevisses filled with peacock-blue snow. The same strange blue snow had obliterated their trail, and Tom, his bloody flanks deep in the drifts, leaped and slid and turned, leaving a wake, Judith said, like that of a drunken elephant.

The drifts had blown clear of the narrow ridge down which poor Buster had slid. They dared not trust the horses here, but dismounted and crept gingerly across, the animals slipping and snorting behind them. They rested after the crossing, and Douglas saw that tears were frozen on Judith's lashes.

"Judith, I believe the old horse was glad to go in service that way," he said.

Judith shook her head. "It's been a terribly expensive trip," she said. "Old Johnny and Buster."

"Expensive for them, yes,—poor old scouts both of them," Douglas sighed, then added, "But, God, what a marvelous trip for me!"

"And for me!" Judith nodded soberly.

They beat their hands across their breasts and remounted, silently.

All the brilliant afternoon, they worked their uneven way upward. Each of the horses was down again and again. Both Judith and Douglas were bruised and cut by ice. Both were drawing breath in rapid sobs when, just before sunset, they fought the last few yards to the level of the Pass, won to it, and lay on the icy ledge, exhausted. Wolf Cub nosed them and whined disconsolately.

"You're right—old hunter—!" gasped Douglas. "If we—don't—keep moving—the cold—will get us!"

Judith, who had been lying on her back staring at the sky, rolled over on her face and struggled to her hands and knees.

"Keep that—wild—elephant—you call—a horse in a long lead—or he'll step on you—Doug!" she called.

"Give me—a long—start, then!"

Douglas started forward on hands and knees. The little wild mare was as careful in following Judith as was the Wolf Cub. But Tom gave constant evidence of an earnest desire to walk on Douglas instead of the trail. He was too tired now, however, to be ugly, and the Pass was crossed without accident or incident.

It was dusk when they made the great rocks where Douglas had camped before. Judith's strength was gone. She pulled the reins over the little wild mare's head and tried to pull her ax from its sheath. But her benumbed fingers refused to act.

"Keep moving, Jude!" urged Douglas. "Just till I can get a fire started. Don't stop walking for a moment!"

When at last a blaze was going before the rocks, Doug unrolled the blankets from the lead-horse and wrapped Judith in them. She crouched against the face of the rocks in silence while Douglas put the coffee-pot to boil and thawed out the bacon. It was not until she had swallowed a second cup of the steaming beverage that the snow stupor left her eyes.

Suddenly she smiled, and said, "It almost nipped us that time, Douglas!"

"And yet you thought you could make Bowdin's ranch alone!" grunted Douglas.

"It would have been getting warmer all the time. There would have been nothing like this!" shivering as a great blast of wind swept over the top of the rock heap.

"You risked death in every step," insisted Douglas. "It was like going down a canyon wall, not a mountainside. The drifts and ice made it impossible to tell how your next movement would end."

"Well," sighed Judith, "I don't think I'm regretting my decision. This might be worse," stretching out her mittened hands to the blaze.

"Nice, girlish kind of amusements you enjoy!" grunted Douglas, with a little grin. "Something quiet and restful about playing games with you, Jude! Now listen, my dearest, don't close your eyes until I tell you you may. A night camp under Black Devil Pass is plain suicide, if you forget for a moment."

Judith threw off the blankets. "I'll chop some wood and get warmed up."

"Aren't you warm now?" asked Douglas.

"All but around the edges," replied Jude.

"Well, you put the blankets round yourself again and save your strength for to-morrow. You'll need it. It won't take me long to get things ready for the night."

Judith snuggled back in the blankets. "I'm really not a bit more done up than you are, but it's worth a trip over the Pass to see a Lost Chief rancher take such care of a girl. I didn't know you had it in you, Doug!"

Douglas laughed and began making the camp ready for the night. When he had finished his preparations, he sat down beside Judith, pulled a part of the blankets over his shoulders and drew her close against him. The Wolf Cub lay as close as he could crowd against Judith's other side, his nose almost in the embers.

Judith looked into Doug's face attentively. His eyes were heavy and deep sunk in his head.

"You are very, very tired, Douglas. Why don't you get some sleep?"

Douglas shook his head. "To-morrow, if all goes well, we'll reach Nelson's place. This is to be my one last night alone with you. I'm not going to sleep until I have to. This camp might seem sort of cold and up in the air to some people, but to me, it's pretty close to heaven!"

"I never can connect the man you've grown to be," mused Judith, "with the horrid boy you were once. I wonder what has changed you so?"

"Boys are rotten," agreed Douglas cheerfully. "Loving you is what has changed me most. Everything else came out of that."

"I suppose," Judith looked at the fire thoughtfully, "that if I'm going to work in an office, I'd better begin to polish up my manners."

"You'll be a wonder in an office!" said Douglas. "I can just see you coaxing and taming a typewriter same as you coaxed and tamed old Sioux. And just about as easy a job. You won't miss your horses and the Wolf Cub. You won't be homesick for the range. O no!"

"I've thought that all out, too," returned Judith coolly. "I'll hate every moment of it. But I'll be learning."

"Learning what, Judith?"

"About life!"

"About life! Judith, this is life. All of life. This!" He turned her face to his and kissed her lingeringly.

She was silent for a moment and there were tears in her eyes. Then she said, softly, "No, it's only a part of life. Things of the mind count heavily as you grow older. They count very much with you right now. What else is your fight for the sky pilot but a thing of the mind?"

"It's all based on my love for you, Judith," repeated Doug. "Judith, you never can stay away from Lost Chief."

"I'll stick it out. See if I don't! Will-power is the best thing I possess. Inez always said I'd never get up courage to leave. Perhaps I wouldn't have if I hadn't been so angry. But I did leave. She didn't know me."

"I wish Inez had run away. She's been your and my curse."

"How is she worse than Charleton?"

"She's more likable and a lot finer and so she has more influence. You don't really think for a moment that Peter will marry her, do you?" Douglas spoke contemptuously.

"Well, if he doesn't marry her, it won't be because he considers that he's led a perfect life, I hope."

"That isn't the point. I think that men insist on marrying decent women because there's a race instinct that makes a man turn to something better than himself for his mate. It's what lifts the race, keeps the spiritual side of life moving uphill instead of down. If this wasn't true, human beings would never have got out of the monkey stage."

Judith looked at Doug with interest. "That might all be true, but I hope you don't put that up as an excuse for the double code."

"No. I don't. I'm just stating one of the selfish, brutal facts of life."

Judith made no reply, and for a long time Douglas made no attempt to break the silence. It was enough to be sitting under the brilliant heavens with Judith's wonderful body warm against his side. The far-drawn cry of the coyotes disturbing him now no more than it did the Wolf Cub listening but unheeding.

"I can't help thinking about old Johnny," said Judith at last. "It's going to worry me terribly when I'm by myself again. I should have stopped and taken care of him."

"It's not going to worry me," returned Douglas quietly. "The poor old fellow was unhappy and useless. He died a real hero's death for some one he loved. Folks in Lost Chief are going to remember that instead of his poor old feeble mind."

"I'm glad you were kind to him! You have been wise and kind in many ways, Doug, and you are only a boy. I believe Peter is right in saying you are going to be a big man."

"Shucks! Peter doesn't know that all the good there is in me is built on you."

"That isn't true," contradicted Judith. "You're big within yourself. Even Inez said that."

Douglas grunted and his voice was without enthusiasm as he said, "Inez can't see anything straight that is related to love. I'll admit she's dangerously interesting. If I hadn't always been caring for you, she might have got me twisted the same as she has you."

"I'm not twisted," protested Judith stoutly. "I'm just not afraid to see marriage as it is. Sordid!"

"Inez!" sniffed Douglas.

"Let's not begin that again!" exclaimed Judith. "Just love me, Douglas, and let me go away."

He drew her closer still. "Love you!" he repeated in his quiet voice. "You might as well tell me to breathe or my heart to keep on beating. I haven't done anything else since the day I drove the preacher out of the schoolhouse. Even when I've tried to stop caring, I couldn't do it!" with a whimsical smile. "Do you remember how I wouldn't let you go with Dad to feed the yearlings?"

"Yes, I remember because from that moment you were a little different from other Lost Chief men in my mind. Tell me some more."

Douglas stared at the fire, going in retrospect over the long, long fight, the fight that still was only half over.

"I can't put it into words that will make it seem as big to you as it is to me, Judith. Tell me, have you been lonely all your life?"

"Yes. Very, very lonely. With the feeling that there was no one to understand."

"That's the way it's been with me, only I always knew that if you could care for me we could understand each other. I want to make you know me to-night, Jude. I want to fix my real self so in your mind that wherever you go, you'll have me with you."

"You did that long ago, Douglas," said Judith softly.

"Have I?" wistfully. "You see, Jude, you are so mixed up in my mind with Grandfather's dream of Lost Chief, and mine, and the preacher, and God, that I don't know myself where one leaves off and another begins. And to-night, one part of me is on fire with happiness and another is frozen with discouragement. Are you sure you can care for me, Judith?"

"Ever since that night in the hay-loft when you kissed me, after your father shot Swift. I didn't want to love you. There didn't seem much romance about a boy you'd lived with all your life. I didn't want to marry. I wanted to give all there was in me to some one big and fine enough to appreciate it. And after all, it's only you."

"Only me!" ejaculated Douglas, comically.

Judith did not smile. "I fought and fought against it. But every year I saw you growing into a bigger, finer man than Lost Chief ever had known—a lonely sort of a man, not afraid to be laughed at even when it was about a matter of religion. I hated to see you making a fool of yourself, and yet I admired you for it. You grew so straight and self-controlled, and Doug, you are so wonderful to look at! Your father never dreamed of being as handsome as you. He's just a great animal. But no one can look into your eyes and not see how you've fought to make a man of yourself. I love you, Douglas!"

They clung to each other in the firelight, heedless of the unthinkable loneliness that hemmed them in, of the ardors of the day, of the terror of to-morrow.

"Judith! Judith! I cannot let you go!" breathed Douglas.

"I must go!" Judith freed herself suddenly. "Nothing shall persuade me to go back to the commonness of marriage in Lost Chief."

"Marriage is exactly what you make it," declared Douglas. "I believe we can keep it beautiful."

"I'm afraid!" repeated Judith. "It's hard to do or be anything fine in Lost Chief. You know that. See what they did to you! Douglas, what are you going to do about their burning up your ranch?"

Judith felt his muscles stiffen. "I'm going to fix Scott and Charleton, once and for all," he replied.

"Shall you rebuild the chapel?"

"Yes—" Douglas made the affirmation then stopped, abruptly. Rebuild the chapel? And Judith not there? Put up the big fight for old Fowler, and Judith never returning to Lost Chief? Where now was all the zest for the fight? Why the chapel, why the ranch, why the big dream for the children who were to grow up properly in the Valley?

"No!" he exclaimed suddenly. "I shan't rebuild the chapel!"

"Fowler was the wrong man," Judith said. "You must realize that now. I wonder what they did with the poor old chap. I don't want any harm to come to him even if he did make you a lot of trouble."

"It doesn't matter," muttered Doug. "It's all over for me if you are going away—" his voice broke and he shivered violently.

Judith looked into his face with quick anxiety. His lips were blue. "You go chop some wood!" she ordered. "And when you are warmed up, you creep into the blankets with Wolf Cub and sleep for four hours. I'll keep the fire up. You are so tired, Doug, that the cold will get you if you aren't careful."

Douglas rose stiffly, and wearily began an attack on another cedar. But he had not taken a dozen strokes when he began to sink slowly to the ground. Judith, ran to him and helped him back to the blankets. Then she covered him snugly, and in a moment he was asleep.

It was midnight when she wakened Douglas. She was blue and shivering. "I'm a new man, Judith. Roll in quickly!" and he picked up the faithful ax.

It was long and biting cold till dawn. Douglas was too weary, too much menaced by the cold, to think coherently; for now, conscious of the depletion of his strength, even his new-found happiness could not blur the fact that he and Judith were playing with death on Black Devil Peak. He kept the fire going and fought the desire to sleep until, far below and to the east, the Indian Range turned black against a crimson sky. Then he awakened Judith. They made a hasty breakfast, then started the stiff and weary horses through the drifts toward Mormon Valley.

But Tom horse, facing homeward, needed none of the rowelling that he had demanded on the way up. The cold and wind were difficult to bear, for the two young people were inexpressibly weary of brain as well as body. By noon they made the valley. It was a slow-moving little outfit that finally limped past Nelson's corral and was greeted by a shout from the cabin door.

Elijah, his wife, and children, rushed out to meet them and led them into the big bed-living-room off the kitchen.

"Well," said Mrs. Nelson, "I knew she'd have to come back with you!"



CHAPTER XIX

HOME

Douglas was half blinded by snow-glare and wind, so it was several minutes before he observed an old man sitting eagerly erect on one of the beds. Doug started to his feet.

"Where'd you come from, Mr. Fowler!"

"From Lost Chief Peak. Get warm and rested, Doug, before you try to talk."

"I was starting out after you when I found that Judith—" began Doug. "And then—"

"Judith," interrupted Mr. Fowler, "needed you more than I did."

"Did they hurt you?" insisted Douglas.

"No. Don't try to talk till you are rested, my boy."

"That won't take long!" croaked Douglas.

But, as a matter of fact, it was morning before he heard the preacher's story or told his own. He was warmed and fed enormously and rolled into a feather bed. And he knew nothing more until the smell of coffee and the sound of women's voices roused him.

The living-room was flooded with sunlight. The preacher was thrusting wood into the red-hot stove.

"Where's Judith?" asked Douglas.

"Helping Mrs. Nelson get breakfast. How are you?"

"Fine! Do you suppose I can shave before breakfast?"

The preacher nodded toward a washstand in the corner and Douglas began to make his toilet. Mr. Fowler made no attempt to talk during this process but stood before the fire, watching the young man with somber, wistful eyes.

It was an exceedingly well-groomed young rider who appeared at Elijah's long breakfast table a half-hour later. Judith, snow-burned, but otherwise a very fit young person, gave him an appreciative look and smile, and left him to the others while she went on with her breakfast.

They sat long at the table. The children were sent off to school. The adventure up and down Black Devil Peak was thoroughly discussed. Then Douglas turned to the preacher.

"And what did they do to you, Mr. Fowler?"

The old man smiled grimly. "That won't take long to tell. Old Johnny and I went to sleep soon after you left, and the first thing I knew I was being gagged and blindfolded by a couple of fellows in masks. They carried me out to the corral and fastened me onto a horse. I didn't put up a fight, Doug. I'm too old. One of the men then led my horse off at a gallop. What became of the other man and Johnny, I can only surmise from what Mr. Nelson has told me."

"Who were the men?" demanded Douglas.

"I don't know. Of course, I suspect Charleton Falkner and Scott Parsons. I suppose it was Scott Parsons, though I couldn't prove it. I suppose he took me along the trail Nelson has kept open past the old Government corral to get to Scott's trail when he goes for his mail. Anyhow, he locked me into that old cabin, up in the Government corral. There was fuel and matches, so he didn't want me to freeze to death. I think he intended to come back the next day and take me somewhere else before I freed myself or some one found me. But his plan must have miscarried for he didn't come back. It was so very cold and I was so lightly clad that at first I didn't dare to start out even after I'd broken the door open. But two days of hunger made me desperate. The trail was fairly well snowed in but I headed for what I thought would be Nelson's ranch. But in an hour or so I was all in. If Elijah hadn't found me, I'd have died of the cold up there on the mountainside."

"I was riding over to Lost Trail for news," explained Elijah.

"You were riding for God, I'd say," cried Mr. Fowler. "And if I'd been a Mormon bishop I couldn't have been made more welcome than I have been here."

"A preacher's a preacher," said Elijah. "Well, Douglas, what's next on your program?"

Douglas looked at Judith. "I've promised to take Judith up to Mountain City. She's going to get a job up there, and I am too!"

Judith put down her coffee-cup and her great eyes blazed. "Why, Douglas Spencer! You are going to do nothing of the sort!"

"What is Lost Chief to me without you?" asked Douglas, coolly and entirely ignoring the eager-eyed audience.

Judith's face expressed entire disapproval. "I never thought you'd let them run you out, Doug!" She turned to Mr. Fowler. "Don't let him be a quitter, Mr. Fowler."

Mr. Fowler was watching Douglas with troubled eyes. "I don't know," he said, "that I blame Douglas. It seems to me that Lost Chief will have to become conscious of its needs before it can be helped. I love Douglas very much. I'd not be sorry to see him get out into the world where there's a bigger chance for his abilities than in that godless valley."

Judith turned from the preacher impatiently. "Douglas Spencer! You know you'll never be happy anywhere else. Lost Chief is your home and the home of all your people before you."

"How about its being home to you?" asked Douglas.

"No place can be home to me that doesn't need all that's in me," replied Judith. "Lost Chief is no place for me. It's not a woman's country."

"It ought to be made fit for women and for little children!" cried Mr. Fowler, with sudden vehemence. "I should have done it. But I failed there as I have everywhere. I didn't bring God to Lost Chief, nor to Judith, nor worst of all, to Douglas."

"Don't you two young people believe in God?" demanded Elijah Nelson.

They stared at him without replying.

"Who guided Judith over the Pass?" asked the Mormon. "Her own smartness, I suppose, or chance, anything but the hand of the Almighty!"

"It was Destiny. All of it has been Destiny," said Douglas suddenly.

"And what is Destiny but God?" asked Elijah.

No one spoke for a moment. Then Elijah went on, with Mr. Fowler's own vehemence:

"You folks over in Lost Chief have seen fit to treat us Mormons as if we were a pack of coyotes bedding down too near your herds. Did you ever try to find out what kind of people we really are and why we stay and win out when we settle in a place? I'll tell you. The church makes our settlements for us. When she calls us to settle in the wild she says, Go, five families, or ten, or twenty, and settle in such a place. Take with you your wives and babies. Put your roots deep in the soil. Build for the future generations. Make a community deep fertilized by the idea of Mormonism, train your children in it, cling one family to the other in helpfulness and to the church in faith. Co-operate with each other and with the church, and the church will stand by you and loan you money, give you advice, be your very fountain of life.

"And the church does stand by us and we by it. And we are building up God-fearing communities all over the West, just like the Puritans once built up in the East. Why? Because we pioneer, inspired by our church and the love of God! What Gentile church is doing this, answering the economic needs of its people as well as the spiritual? Why should a settlement like yours prosper? Why, the most promising young man in it is deserting it to chase after a flighty girl! It has no church. It has no minister. Ha! As long as you Gentiles are so, the Mormons can ride over you and crowd you out!"

"You can't do anything of the kind!" declared Judith.

"Why not?" asked Douglas bitterly. "Of course they can! Nelson is dead right."

Elijah gave Judith a scornful glance. "You ought to be satisfied, Judith. You'll be getting your own way, no matter what becomes of Douglas. He ought never to leave Lost Chief. Though it will be better for us Mormons if he does."

Douglas was following his own line of thought. "The Mormons are right," he said. "It's the families that count. A man can't do real pioneering without a woman and Lost Chief is still pioneering. The right kind of a woman could do more for Lost Chief than a man."

Judith looked at him with gathering intentness. "How could she, Doug?"

"Why, look at the influence Inez has! She's thought it worth while to influence people, so's to justify her way of living. She's beautiful and she's bad. If a woman who was beautiful and good made up her mind to make Lost Chief the paradise it ought to be, nothing could stop her."

"If she had the church to back her," said Elijah Nelson.

Douglas nodded; then, his face aflame, he jumped to his feet. "If Jude and I could work together in Lost Chief we'd—My God, do you know what I'd do? I'd rebuild the cabin and I'd rebuild the chapel. And we'd bring Mr. Fowler back. And Judith and I would go to church to him and we'd hunt for God till we found Him! And when we found Him, we'd go out and bring the children of the Valley to the church. It's the children that count. We'd dish all this discussion with the grown folks. All the Scotts and Charletons and Inez Rodmans in the Valley wouldn't count if the children would be sure of God." He turned to Judith. "You'll admit, won't you, Jude, that if you and I had had faith, our childhood would have been a finer thing?"

"Yes, I think that's true," admitted Judith. "Do you think there's a job there for me, Mr. Fowler, all faithless as I am?"

Mr. Fowler nodded. "Yes, I do. Lost Chief offers a full-sized job to a woman with a brain and the right kind of a vision. She could, indeed, help to make it a very paradise for children."

"If the church didn't hamper her too much." Mrs. Nelson spoke for the first time. "The church and God are both males."

Judith gave the Mormon wife a sudden appreciative smile. Douglas, watching the girl's kindling face, said in his gentle way, "I've often thought if anybody could get the right kind of a moral hold on the kids of Lost Chief, the greatest horsemanship in the world could be developed in that old valley."

"You are dreaming dreams!" exclaimed Nelson. "All this takes time, and you Lost Chief folks want to realize that the Mormons are coming!"

Judith eyed her host keenly; then she turned to Douglas with overwhelming interest welling to her eyes. "This is the first time," she cried, "that you've ever suggested any kind of a future to me that made a demand on my intelligence. Mr. Nelson, have you really got your eyes on Lost Chief Valley, or are you just trying to bluff Douglas into going back because you like him?"

The Mormon's eyes narrowed and his jaw set. "I like him, yes, but the church says we are to take Lost Chief Valley, and we are going to take it when the time is ripe. I can afford to be as kind as I want to be to Douglas and Fowler. Nothing can stop us when we cross into your valley with the church behind us. You folks hang together by habit. We Mormons are knit together by a divine idea that takes care of every moment of our lives. Do you think a man like Scott Parsons can guard your gates? And Douglas is running away!"

Judith jumped to her feet, indignation flashing from her eyes.

"He is not! If your Mormon religion can do all you claim for you, then our religion can do as much for us as it did for our ancestors. I never did believe there was a God. But that's not saying He's not to be found if you really hunt for Him."

"'If with all your hearts ye truly seek me, ye shall ever surely find me,'" said Mr. Fowler quietly.

Judith gave him a quick look. "That isn't the kind of a God we young folks are looking for," she said.

"What is your idea?" asked Mr. Fowler.

Judith lifted her chin.

"A fire mist and a planet, A crystal and a cell, A jelly-fish and a saurian And caves where cave-men dwell. Then a sense of law and beauty, And a face turned from the clod, Some call it Evolution And others call it God."

There was quiet in the warm, homely kitchen. Douglas watched Judith with his heart in his eyes.

Elijah Nelson cleared his throat. "Nevertheless, Judith," he said, "this is a fair warning that I'm going to put the Book of Mormon into Lost Chief."

Judith flushed, her lips tightened, and she walked deliberately around the table and took the preacher's hand. "Come, Mr. Fowler, let's go home with Douglas and get to work!"

Douglas drew a long breath.

The preacher rose with alacrity. "Where shall we go?" he asked.

Douglas answered. "To Peter's until I can rebuild the cabin."

Elijah Nelson smiled grimly.

"Let's get started!" urged Judith.

The breakfast party broke up. The men went out to attend to the horses. Judith and Mrs. Nelson turned to the dishes. Douglas from the corral watched the backdoor attentively, and when Mrs. Nelson appeared he signaled to her to wait for him to speak to her.

"Send Jude into the living-room for something," he whispered, "and then keep the folks out while I talk to her for a little while."

Mrs. Nelson smiled understandingly, and a few moments later Douglas was standing with his back to the living-room stove, both of his arms about Judith.

"I had to thank you," he said, "and you were too stupid to make the chance. Judith! Judith! You've made the world into heaven for me!"

"I'm not exactly unhappy, myself!" Judith's eyes glowed as she returned Doug's look.

"Judith," he exclaimed, "let's ask Mr. Fowler to marry us now, before we start home!"

Judith whitened a little. "O Douglas, you are crowding me, my dear!"

"But why wait, Judith? Isn't it the only thing to do? Neither of us will ever go back to Dad's ranch again. We can be married and camp with Peter until we get the cabin rebuilt. That's won't take a month. O, Judith, please!"

"It's—it's too soon!"

"Too soon for what? We've been caring a long, long time, and we need each other so!"

Judith freed herself from Douglas' arms and walked over to the window, from which one could see Black Devil Peak glowering in the morning sun. She stood a long time, it seemed to Douglas. He wondered what thoughts were passing in that fine head outlined against the snowy fields. What sense of sacrifice, he thought, must a girl like Jude have, in giving up her life to a man? Then he smiled, half grimly, half tenderly. Judith would never be any man's really, to know and to hold. Her fiery charm was a thing ever to pursue, never fully to overtake. "Forever would he love and she be fair!" He waited silently, his heart thudding heavily. At last she turned from the window and came slowly toward him with a look in her eyes he could not pretend to read to its depths. He only knew that there was faith in him there and a passionate affection. What more, he was willing to trust to the future. She came and leaned against him and he knew that at last the long struggle was ended.

They were married a few moments later, standing before the window, with Douglas' hair a halo of gold above his steady eyes and Judith's fine head held high. The Reverend Mr. Fowler performed the rites with a trembling voice. When he had finished he said to Elijah and his wife:

"In all my long experience I have never joined together a couple with such infinite satisfaction as this."

"That's good," said Mrs. Nelson, wiping her eyes, "seeing that you're going on the wedding-journey with them!"

That afternoon, as the shadows on the plains east of the post-office grew long and blue-black, Judith, Douglas and Mr. Fowler jingled up to Peter's door. They slung their saddles on the buck fence, turned their horses into his corral, and went in. Peter was standing by the stove, dressed for a cold ride.

"Judith! You are safe!" he gasped, taking both her hands in his, his sallow face suddenly glowing. "Where did you find her, Doug?"

"Just the other side of Black Devil Pass!"

Peter whistled, stared, then turned to the preacher. "And where did you come from, Fowler?"

"Elijah Nelson rescued me from the west side of Lost Chief Peak."

Judith was pulling off her mackinaw and her beaver cap. "We'll tell you a wonderful story if you'll feed us, Peter."

Peter undid the silk handkerchief from his ears. "I was outfitting to follow Doug's trail. We buried poor little old Johnny this morning."

The quick tears sprang to Judith's eyes; but she said nothing, and Peter went on, "I got your father home on Monday. My guess is that he is ashamed enough of himself to last the rest of his life. That's about the extent of my stories. Have you any casualties to report?"

"Only poor Buster. He lies in a snowdrift up on the other side of Black Devil. We put in last night at Elijah Nelson's, where we found Mr. Fowler. Can we stay with you for a while, Peter?"

"You sure can. We can use those rooms upstairs for sleeping. Fine! I'll be glad to have you. You too, Fowler."

"Where's Scott Parsons?" asked Douglas.

"He's still with Inez. Seems like you gave him a bad knock-out. He's having rough going, I can tell you. Inez has turned against him and Grandma Brown had to go over there and take care of him. And she is in no frame of mind to stand anything from anybody." Peter chuckled, then went on. "Charleton says he was in bed and asleep by eleven o'clock Saturday night, and nobody has been able to prove that he wasn't. I don't think there is a doubt in the world that it was Scott and Charleton did the dirty work, but it's going to be hard to prove."

Peter set a kettle of beans on the stove and Judith prepared a pot of coffee.

"Take off your spurs, Fowler," Peter nodded genially at the preacher. "All's well that ends well. I hope that nothing more than your feelings got hurt."

To Peter's utter astonishment Mr. Fowler suddenly laughed heartily.

"My feelings, Peter," he exclaimed, "were never in better trim than they are this minute."

"Nor mine!" agreed Douglas.

"Nor mine!" added Judith.

Peter stared from one face to another. "It sort of looks," he said finally, "as if I had sweated blood for nothing."

"No, you haven't, Peter!" exclaimed Douglas. "Tragedy certainly stalked our tracks."

"Let me have the story," begged the postmaster. "Jude, after you left John and old Johnny, what happened? You evidently went plumb crazy. Begin at that point. And don't leave out anything!"

He lighted his pipe and sat down. Judith, swinging her spurred boots as she sat on the table, began obediently. She took Peter along every hour of her trip until she fell into that dreadful sleep on the south slope of Black Devil. Douglas took up his story there and when he had finished, Mr. Fowler repeated the account of his adventure.

Peter heaved a great sigh. "Some adventure! Lord! Lord! What a narrow squeak! Well, and what did our Mormon friends have to say to all these doings?"

Judith and Douglas smiled at each other. Peter, catching that smile, started forward in his chair, then turned to Fowler. The preacher smiled broadly. "Let me tell that part of it," he begged. Douglas and Judith nodded, and the old man plunged with great enjoyment into the account of the happenings that morning at Nelson's ranch.

When he finished with the wedding, Peter rose, his face working. He walked over to Judith and looked deep into her eyes, and without a word kissed her on the cheek. Then he wrung Douglas' hand.

"Hang it all!" he said. "There is something startlingly right the way life works out if you give it a chance!"

Nobody answered. Douglas and Judith were smiling at each other and the preacher was engrossed in watching them. Peter cleared his throat.

"What are you happy idiots going to do about Scott and Charleton?"

"I had planned to get even with them and run them out of the Valley," said Douglas; "but, after all, I owe them a debt of gratitude. Even if they didn't mean it that way!"

"We'd better not start our new life in the Valley with a fight," Judith nodded. "Anyhow we've agreed that we aren't concerned right now with the grown-ups."

Peter scratched his head. "I guess you are sensible. But I think pressure can be brought to bear to make Charleton and Scott rebuild the cabin and chapel for you."

Mr. Fowler shook his head vehemently. "I wouldn't let their hands desecrate the chapel! Douglas and I are going to build it."

"And I wouldn't let them desecrate the cabin," declared Judith. "So I guess they are out of it. We're going to give them a thorough drubbing but quite in another way."

Peter chuckled with huge enjoyment. "What are you going to do about Elijah Nelson's threat to take Lost Chief Valley over for the Mormons?"

"I don't know yet," said Douglas; "but we're not going to let him do it, are we, Judith?"

"We certainly are not! That's one reason I want to keep Scott in the Valley. If Scott could get the idea of fighting with his mind instead of his gun, he'd be a good citizen."

Peter grinned at Fowler. "The infants are running the Valley already! Well, why not? They are the new generation."

"Peter," demanded Judith, "aren't those beans ready yet?"

The postmaster started to his feet. "I suppose you folks are hungry. Judith, you set the table. Doug, did you feed the horses well? It's going to be a bitter-cold night."

"Yes, we took care of them," replied Douglas, absent-mindedly, his eyes on Judith.

"Did you?" Peter turned to Fowler. "I sha'n't take Doug's word about anything that's happened subsequent to the ceremony."

"I think you're wise," nodded the preacher. "But as a matter of fact, we did feed them. Shall I put the chairs up?"

"Go ahead," said Peter, setting the pot of beans in the middle of the table.

Then, as they gathered around the table, the preacher hesitated, looked from one face to another, and asked, "Do you mind if I say grace?"

"No," replied Peter firmly, "we don't mind. You can say grace, make signs, or do anything else that will help you hang on in the big fight you've got ahead of you. I'll say it too, if it will strengthen your hands."

Mr. Fowler shook his head, smiled, and covering his eyes, poured out his heart to the Almighty.

THE END