Wayland wondered a little at the freedom of expression on the part of Nash; but said: "If he runs his office as he runs his ranch he surely is condemned to go."

"There's where the girl comes in. She keeps the boys in the office lined up and maintains things in pretty fair shape. She knows the old man is in danger of losing his job, and she's doing her best to hold him to it. She's like a son to him and he relies on her judgment when a close decision comes up. But it's only a matter of time when he and all he represents must drift by. This is a big movement we're mixed with."

"I begin to feel that that's why I'd like to take it up. It's the only thing out here that interests me—and I've got to do something. I can't loaf."

"Well, you get Berrie to take up your case and you're all right. She has the say about who goes on the force in this forest."

It was late in the afternoon before Wayland started back to Meeker's with intent to repack his belongings and leave the ranch for good. He had decided not to call at McFarlane's, a decision which came not so much from fear of Clifford Belden as from a desire to shield Berea from further trouble, but as he was passing the gate, the girl rose from behind a clump of willows and called to him: "Oh, Mr. Norcross! Wait a moment."

He drew rein, and, slipping from his horse, approached her. "What is it, Miss Berrie?" he asked, with wondering politeness.

She confronted him with gravity. "It's too late for you to cross the ridge. It'll be dark long before you reach the cut-off. You'd better not try to make it."

"I think I can find my way," he answered, touched by her consideration. "I'm not so helpless as I was when I came."

"Just the same you mustn't go on," she insisted. "Father told me to ask you to come in and stay all night. He wants to meet you. I was afraid you might ride by after what happened to-day, and so I came up here to head you off." She took his horse by the rein, and flashed a smiling glance up at him. "Come now, do as the Supervisor tells you."

"Wait a moment," he pleaded. "On second thought, I don't believe it's a good thing for me to go home with you. It will only make further trouble for—for us both."

She was almost as direct as Belden had been. "I know what you mean. I saw Cliff follow you. He jumped you, didn't he?"

"He overtook me—yes."

"What did he say?"

He hesitated. "He was pretty hot, and said things he'll be sorry for when he cools off."

"He told you not to come here any more—advised you to hit the out-going trail—didn't he?"

He flushed with returning shame of it all, but quietly answered: "Yes, he said something about riding east."

"Are you going to do it?"

"Not to-day; but I guess I'd better keep away from here."

She looked at him steadily. "Why?"

"Because you've been very kind to me, and I wouldn't for the world do anything to hurt or embarrass you."

"Don't you mind about me," she responded, bluntly. "What happened this morning wasn't your fault nor mine. Cliff made a mighty coarse play, something he'll have to pay for. He knows that right now. He'll be back in a day or two begging my pardon, and he won't get it. Don't you worry about me, not for a minute—I can take care of myself—I grew up that way, and don't you be chased out of the country by anybody. Come, father will be looking for you."

With a feeling that he was involving both the girl and himself in still darker storms, the young fellow yielded to her command, and together they walked along the weed-bordered path, while she continued:

"This isn't the first time Cliff has started in to discipline me; but it's obliged to be the last. He's the kind that think they own a girl just as soon as they get her to wear an engagement ring; but Cliff don't own me. I told him I wouldn't stand for his coarse ways, and I won't!"

Wayland tried to bring her back to humor. "You're a kind of 'new woman.'"

She turned a stern look on him. "You bet I am! I was raised a free citizen. No man can make a slave of me. I thought he understood that; but it seems he didn't. He's all right in many ways—one of the best riders in the country—but he's pretty tolerable domineering—I've always known that—still, I never expected him to talk to me like he did to-day. It certainly was raw." She broke off abruptly. "You mustn't let Frank Meeker get the best of you, either," she advised. "He's a mean little weasel if he gets started. I'll bet he put Cliff up to this business."

"Do you think so?"

"Yes, he just as good as told me he'd do it. I know Frank, he's my own cousin, and someways I like him; but he's the limit when he gets going. You see, he wanted to get even with Cliff and took that way of doing it. I'll ride up there and give him a little good advice some Saturday."

He was no longer amused by her blunt speech, and her dark look saddened him. She seemed so unlike the happy girl he met that first day, and the change in her subtended a big, rough, and pitiless world of men against which she was forced to contend all her life.

Mrs. McFarlane greeted Norcross with cordial word and earnest hand-clasp. "I'm glad to see you looking so well," she said, with charming sincerity.

"I'm browner, anyway," he answered, and turned to meet McFarlane, a short, black-bearded man, with fine dark eyes and shapely hands—hands that had never done anything more toilsome than to lift a bridle rein or to clutch the handle of a gun. He was the horseman in all his training, and though he owned hundreds of acres of land, he had never so much as held a plow or plied a spade. His manner was that of the cow-boss, the lord of great herds, the claimant of empires of government grass-land. Poor as his house looked, he was in reality rich. Narrow-minded in respect to his own interests, he was well in advance of his neighbors on matters relating to the general welfare, a curious mixture of greed and generosity, as most men are, and though he had been made Supervisor at a time when political pull still crippled the Service, he was loyal to the flag. "I'm mighty glad to see you," he heartily began. "We don't often get a man from the sea-level, and when we do we squeeze him dry."

His voice, low, languid, and soft, was most insinuating, and for hours he kept his guest talking of the East and its industries and prejudices; and Berrie and her mother listened with deep admiration, for the youngster had seen a good deal of the old world, and was unusually well read on historical lines of inquiry. He talked well, too, inspired by his attentive audience.

Berrie's eyes, wide and eager, were fixed upon him unwaveringly. He felt her wonder, her admiration, and was inspired to do his best. Something in her absorbed attention led him to speak of things so personal that he wondered at himself for uttering them.

"I've been dilettante all my life," was one of his confessions. "I've traveled; I've studied in a tepid sort of fashion; I went through college without any idea of doing anything with what I got; I had a sort of pride in keeping up with my fellows; and I had no idea of preparing for any work in the world. Then came my breakdown, and my doctor ordered me out here. I came intending to fish and loaf around, but I can't do that. I've got to do something or go back home. I expected to have a chum of mine with me, but his father was injured in an automobile accident, so he went into the office to help out."

As he talked the girl discovered new graces, new allurements in him. His smile, so subtly self-derisive, and his voice so flexible and so quietly eloquent, completed her subjugation. She had no further care concerning Clifford—indeed, she had forgotten him—for the time at least. The other part of her—the highly civilized latent power drawn from her mother—was in action. She lost her air of command, her sense of chieftainship, and sat humbly at the feet of this shining visitor from the East.

At last Mrs. McFarlane rose, and Berea, reluctantly, like a child loath to miss a fairy story, held out her hand to say good night, and the young man saw on her face that look of adoration which marks the birth of sudden love; but his voice was frank and his glance kindly as he said:

"Here I've done all the talking when I wanted you to tell me all sorts of things."

"I can't tell you anything."

"Oh yes, you can; and, besides, I want you to intercede for me with your father and get me into the Service. But we'll talk about that to-morrow. Good night."

After the women left the room Norcross said:

"I really am in earnest about entering the Forest Service. Landon filled me with enthusiasm about it. Never mind the pay. I'm not in immediate need of money; but I do need an interest in life."

McFarlane stared at him with kindly perplexity. "I don't know exactly what you can do, but I'll work you in somehow. You ought to work under a man like Settle, one that could put you through a training in the rudiments of the game. I'll see what can be done."

"Thank you for that half promise," said Wayland, and he went to his bed happier than at any moment since leaving home.

Berrie, on her part, did not analyze her feeling for Wayland, she only knew that he was as different from the men she knew as a hawk from a sage-hen, and that he appealed to her in a higher way than any other had done. His talk filled her with visions of great cities, and with thoughts of books, for though she was profoundly loyal to her mountain valley, she held other, more secret admirations. She was, in fact, compounded of two opposing tendencies. Her quiet little mother longing—in secret—for the placid, refined life of her native Kentucky town, had dowered her daughter with some part of her desire. She had always hated the slovenly, wasteful, and purposeless life of the cattle-rancher, and though she still patiently bore with her husband's shortcomings, she covertly hoped that Berea might find some other and more civilized lover than Clifford Belden. She understood her daughter too well to attempt to dictate her action; she merely said to her, as they were alone for a few moments: "I don't wonder your father is interested in Mr. Norcross, he's very intelligent—and very considerate."

"Too considerate," said Berrie, shortly; "he makes other men seem like bears or pigs."

Mrs. McFarlane said no more, but she knew that Cliff was, for the time, among the bears.



V

THE GOLDEN PATHWAY

Young Norcross soon became vitally engaged with the problems which confronted McFarlane, and his possible enrolment as a guard filled him with a sense of proprietorship in the forest, which made him quite content with Bear Tooth. He set to work at once to acquire a better knowledge of the extent and boundaries of the reservation. It was, indeed, a noble possession. Containing nearly eight hundred thousand acres of woodland, and reaching to the summits of the snow-lined peaks to the east, south, and west, it appealed to him with silent majesty. It drew upon his patriotism. Remembering how the timber of his own state had been slashed and burned, he began to feel a sense of personal responsibility. He had but to ride into it a few miles in order to appreciate in some degree its grandeur, considered merely as the source of a hundred swift streams, whose waters enriched the valleys lying below.

He bought a horse of his own—although Berrie insisted upon his retaining Pete—and sent for a saddle of the army type, and from sheer desire to keep entirely clear of the cowboy equipment procured puttees like those worn by cavalry officers, and when he presented himself completely uniformed, he looked not unlike a slender, young lieutenant of the cavalry on field duty, and in Berrie's eyes was wondrous alluring.

He took quarters at the hotel, but spent a larger part of each day in Berrie's company—a fact which was duly reported to Clifford Belden. Hardly a day passed without his taking at least one meal at the Supervisor's home.

As he met the rangers one by one, he perceived by their outfits, as well as by their speech, that they were sharply divided upon old lines and new. The experts, the men of college training, were quite ready to be known as Uncle Sam's men. They held a pride in their duties, a respect for their superiors, and an understanding of the governmental policy which gave them dignity and a quiet authority. They were less policemen than trusted agents of a federal department. Nevertheless, there was much to admire in the older men, who possessed a self-reliance, a knowledge of nature, and a certain rough grace which made them interesting companions, and rendered them effective teachers of camping and trailing, and while they were secretly a little contemptuous of the "schoolboys"; they were all quite ready to ask for expert aid when knotty problems arose. It was no longer a question of grazing, it was a question of lumbering and reforestration.

Nash, who took an almost brotherly interest in his apprentice, warningly said: "You want to go well clothed and well shod. You'll have to meet all kinds of weather. Every man in the service, I don't care what his technical job is, should be schooled in taking care of himself in the forest and on the trail. I often meet surveyors and civil engineers—experts—who are helpless as children in camp, and when I want them to go into the hills and do field work, they are almost useless. The old-style ranger has his virtues. Settle is just the kind of instructor you young fellows need."

Berrie also had keen eyes for his outfit and his training, and under her direction he learned to pack a horse, set a tent, build a fire in the rain, and other duties.

"You want to remember that you carry your bed and board with you," she said, "and you must be prepared to camp anywhere and at any time."

The girl's skill in these particulars was marvelous to him, and added to the admiration he already felt for her. Her hand was as deft, as sure, as the best of them, and her knowledge of cayuse psychology more profound than any of the men excepting her father.

One day, toward the end of his second week in the village, the Supervisor said: "Well, now, if you're ready to experiment I'll send you over to Settle, the ranger, on the Horseshoe. He's a little lame on his pen-hand side, and you may be able to help him out. Maybe I'll ride over there with you. I want to line out some timber sales on the west side of Ptarmigan."

This commission delighted Norcross greatly. "I'm ready, sir, this moment," he answered, saluting soldier-wise.

That night, as he sat in the saddle-littered, boot-haunted front room of Nash's little shack, his host said, quaintly: "Don't think you are inheriting a soft snap, son. The ranger's job was a man's job in the old days when it was a mere matter of patrolling; but it's worse and more of it to-day. A ranger must be ready and willing to build bridges, fight fire, scale logs, chop a hole through a windfall, use a pick in a ditch, build his own house, cook, launder, and do any other old trick that comes along. But you'll know more about all this at the end of ten days than I can tell you in a year."

"I'm eager for duty," replied Wayland.

The next morning, as he rode down to the office to meet the Supervisor, he was surprised and delighted to find Berea there. "I'm riding, too," she announced, delightedly. "I've never been over that new trail, and father has agreed to let me go along." Then she added, earnestly: "I think it's fine you're going in for the Service; but it's hard work, and you must be careful till you're hardened to it. It's a long way to a doctor from Settle's station."

He was annoyed as well as touched by her warning, for it proclaimed that he was still far from looking the brave forester he felt himself to be. He replied: "I'm not going to try anything wild, but I do intend to master the trailer's craft."

"I'll teach you how to camp, if you'll let me," she continued. "I've been on lots of surveys with father, and I always take my share of the work. I threw that hitch alone." She nodded toward the pack-horse, whose neat load gave evidence of her skill. "I told father this was to be a real camping expedition, and as the grouse season is on we'll live on the country. Can you fish?"

"Just about that," he laughed. "Good thing you didn't ask me if I could catch fish?" He was recovering his spirits. "It will be great fun to have you as instructor in camp science. I seem to be in for all kinds of good luck."

They both grew uneasy as time passed, for fear something or some one would intervene to prevent this trip, which grew in interest each moment; but at last the Supervisor came out and mounted his horse, the pack-ponies fell in behind, Berrie followed, and the student of woodcraft brought up to rear.

"I hope it won't rain," the girl called back at him, "at least not till we get over the divide. It's a fine ride up the hill, and the foliage is at its best."

It seemed to him the most glorious morning of his life. A few large white clouds were drifting like snow-laden war-vessels from west to east, silent and solemn, and on the highest peaks a gray vapor was lightly clinging. The near-by hills, still transcendently beautiful with the flaming gold of the aspen, burned against the dark green of the farther forest, and far beyond the deep purple of the shadowed slopes rose to smoky blue and tawny yellow. It was a season, an hour, to create raptures in a poet, so radiant, so wide-reaching, so tumultuous was the landscape. Nothing sad, nothing discouraging, showed itself. The wind was brisk, the air cool and clear, and jewel-like small, frost-painted vines and ripened shrubberies blazed upward from the ground. As he rode the youth silently repeated: "Beautiful! Beautiful!"

For several miles they rode upward through golden forests of aspens. On either hand rose thick walls of snow-white boles, and in the mystic glow of their gilded leaves the face of the girl shone with unearthly beauty. It was as if the very air had become auriferous. Magic coins dangled from the branches. Filmy shadows fell over her hair and down her strong young arms like priceless lace. Gold, gold! Everywhere gold, gold and fire!

Twice she stopped to gaze into Wayland's face to say, with hushed intensity: "Isn't it wonderful! Don't you wish it would last forever?"

Her words were poor, ineffectual; but her look, her breathless voice made up for their lack of originality. Once she said: "I never saw it so lovely before; it is an enchanted land!" with no suspicion that the larger part of her ecstasy arose from the presence of her young and sympathetic companion. He, too, responded to the beauty of the day, of the golden forest as one who had taken new hold on life after long illness.

Meanwhile the Supervisor was calmly leading the way upward, vaguely conscious of the magical air and mystic landscape in which his young folk floated as if on wings, thinking busily of the improvements which were still necessary in the trail, and weighing with care the clouds which still lingered upon the tallest summits, as if debating whether to go or to stay. He had never been an imaginative soul, and now that age had somewhat dimmed his eyes and blunted his senses he was placidly content with his path. The rapture of the lover, the song of the poet, had long since abandoned his heart. And yet he was not completely oblivious. To him it was a nice day, but a "weather breeder."

"I wonder if I shall ever ride through this mountain world as unmoved as he seems to be?" Norcross asked himself, after some jarring prosaic remark from his chief. "I am glad Berrie responds to it."

At last they left these lower, wondrous forest aisles and entered the unbroken cloak of firs whose dark and silent deeps had a stern beauty all their own; but the young people looked back upon the glowing world below with wistful hearts. Back and forth across a long, down-sweeping ridge they wove their toilsome way toward the clouds, which grew each hour more formidable, awesome with their weight, ponderous as continents in their majesty of movement. The horses began to labor with roaring breath, and Wayland, dismounting to lighten his pony's burden, was dismayed to discover how thin the air had become. Even to walk unburdened gave him a smothering pain in his breast.

"Better stay on," called the girl. "My rule is to ride the hill going up and walk it going down. Down hill is harder on a horse than going up."

Nevertheless he persisted in clambering up some of the steepest parts of the trail, and was increasingly dismayed by the endless upward reaches of the foot-hills. A dozen times he thought, "We must be nearly at the top," and then other and far higher ridges suddenly developed. Occasionally the Supervisor was forced to unsling an ax and chop his way through a fallen tree, and each time the student hurried to the spot, ready to aid, but was quite useless. He admired the ease and skill with which the older man put his shining blade through the largest bole, and wondered if he could ever learn to do as well.

"One of the first essentials of a ranger's training is to learn to swing an ax," remarked McFarlane, "and you never want to be without a real tool. I won't stand for a hatchet ranger."

Berrie called attention to the marks on the trees. "This is the government sign—a long blaze with two notches above it. You can trust these trails; they lead somewhere."

"As you ride a trail study how to improve it," added the Supervisor, sheathing his ax. "They can all be improved."

Wayland was sure of this a few steps farther on, when the Supervisor's horse went down in a small bog-hole, and Berrie's pony escaped only by the most desperate plunging. The girl laughed, but Wayland was appalled and stood transfixed watching McFarlane as he calmly extricated himself from the saddle of the fallen horse and chirped for him to rise.

"You act as if this were a regular part of the journey," Wayland said to Berrie.

"It's all in the day's work," she replied; "but I despise a bog worse than anything else on the trail. I'll show you how to go round this one." Thereupon she slid from her horse and came tiptoeing back along the edge of the mud-hole.

McFarlane cut a stake and plunged it vertically in the mud. "That means 'no bottom,'" he explained. "We must cut a new trail."

Wayland was dismounting when Berrie said: "Stay on. Now put your horse right through where those rocks are. It's hard bottom there."

He felt like a child; but he did as she bid, and so came safely through, while McFarlane set to work to blaze a new route which should avoid the slough which was already a bottomless horror to the city man.

This mishap delayed them nearly half an hour, and the air grew dark and chill as they stood there, and the amateur ranger began to understand how serious a lone night journey might sometimes be. "What would I do if when riding in the dark my horse should go down like that and pin me in the mud?" he asked himself. "Eternal watchfulness is certainly one of the forester's first principles."

The sky was overshadowed now, and a thin drizzle of rain filled the air. The novice hastened to throw his raincoat over his shoulders; but McFarlane rode steadily on, clad only in his shirtsleeves, unmindful of the wet. Berrie, however, approved Wayland's caution. "That's right; keep dry," she called back. "Don't pay attention to father, he'd rather get soaked any day than unroll his slicker. You mustn't take him for model yet awhile."

He no longer resented her sweet solicitude, although he considered himself unentitled to it, and he rejoiced under the shelter of his fine new coat. He began to perceive that one could be defended against a storm.

After passing two depressing marshes, they came to a hillside so steep, so slippery, so dark, so forbidding, that one of the pack-horses balked, shook his head, and reared furiously, as if to say "I can't do it, and I won't try." And Wayland sympathized with him. The forest was gloomy and cold, and apparently endless.

After coaxing him for a time with admirable gentleness, the Supervisor, at Berrie's suggestion, shifted part of the load to her own saddle-horse, and they went on.

Wayland, though incapable of comment—so great was the demand upon his lungs—was not too tired to admire the power and resolution of the girl, who seemed not to suffer any special inconvenience from the rarefied air. The dryness of his open mouth, the throbbing of his troubled pulse, the roaring of his breath, brought to him with increasing dismay the fact that he had overlooked another phase of the ranger's job. "I couldn't chop a hole through one of these windfalls in a week," he admitted, as McFarlane's blade again liberated them from a fallen tree. "To do office work at six thousand feet is quite different from swinging an ax up here at timber-line," he said to the girl. "I guess my chest is too narrow for high altitudes."

"Oh, you'll get used to it," she replied, cheerily. "I always feel it a little at first; but I really think it's good for a body, kind o' stretches the lungs." Nevertheless, she eyed him with furtive anxiety.

He was beginning to be hungry also—he had eaten a very early breakfast—and he fell to wondering just where and when they were to camp; but he endured in silence. "So long as Berrie makes no complaint my mouth is shut," he told himself. "Surely I can stand it if she can." And so struggled on.

Up and up the pathway looped, crossing minute little boggy meadows, on whose bottomless ooze the grass shook like a blanket, descending steep ravines and climbing back to dark and muddy slopes. The forest was dripping, green, and silent now, a mysterious menacing jungle. All the warmth and magic of the golden forest below was lost as though it belonged to another and sunnier world. Nothing could be seen of the high, snow-flecked peaks which had allured them from the valley. All about them drifted the clouds, and yet through the mist the flushed face of the girl glowed like a dew-wet rose, and the imperturbable Supervisor jogged his remorseless, unhesitating way toward the dense, ascending night.

"I'm glad I'm not riding this pass alone," Wayland said, as they paused again for breath.

"So am I," she answered; but her thought was not his. She was happy at the prospect of teaching him how to camp.

At last they reached the ragged edge of timber-line, and there, rolling away under the mist, lay the bare, grassy, upward-climbing, naked neck of the great peak. The wind had grown keener moment by moment, and when they left the storm-twisted pines below, its breath had a wintry nip. The rain had ceased to fall, but the clouds still hung densely to the loftiest summits. It was a sinister yet beautiful world—a world as silent as a dream, and through the short, thick grass the slender trail ran like a timid serpent. The hour seemed to have neither daytime nor season. All was obscure, mysterious, engulfing, and hostile. Had he been alone the youth would have been appalled by the prospect.

"Now we're on the divide," called Berea; and as she spoke they seemed to enter upon a boundless Alpine plain of velvet-russet grass. "This is the Bear Tooth plateau." Low monuments of loose rock stood on small ledges, as though to mark the course, and in the hollows dark ponds of icy water lay, half surrounded by masses of compact snow.

"This is a stormy place in winter," McFarlane explained. "These piles of stone are mighty valuable in a blizzard. I've crossed this divide in August in snow so thick I could not see a rod."

Half an hour later they began to descend. Wind-twisted, storm-bleached dwarf pines were first to show, then the firs, then the blue-green spruces, and then the sheltering deeps of the undespoiled forest opened, and the roar of a splendid stream was heard; but still the Supervisor kept his resolute way, making no promises as to dinner, though his daughter called: "We'd better go into camp at Beaver Lake. I hope you're not starved," she called to Wayland.

"But I am," he replied, so frankly that she never knew how faint he really was. His knees were trembling with weakness, and he stumbled dangerously as he trod the loose rocks in the path.

They were all afoot now descending swiftly, and the horses ramped down the trail with expectant haste, so that in less than an hour from timber-line they were back into the sunshine of the lower valley, and at three o'clock or thereabouts they came out upon the bank of an exquisite lake, and with a cheery shout McFarlane called out: "Here we are, out of the wilderness!" Then to Wayland: "Well, boy, how did you stand it?"

"Just middling," replied Wayland, reticent from weariness and with joy of their camping-place. The lake, dark as topaz and smooth as steel, lay in a frame of golden willows—as a jewel is filigreed with gold—and above it the cliffs rose three thousand feet in sheer majesty, their upper slopes glowing with autumnal grasses. A swift stream roared down a low ledge and fell into the pond near their feet. Grassy, pine-shadowed knolls afforded pasture for the horses, and two giant firs, at the edge of a little glade, made a natural shelter for their tent.

With businesslike certitude Berrie unsaddled her horse, turned him loose, and lent a skilful hand at removing the panniers from the pack-animals, while Wayland, willing but a little uncertain, stood awkwardly about. Under her instruction he collected dead branches of a standing fir, and from these and a few cones kindled a blaze, while the Supervisor hobbled the horses and set the tent.

"If the work of a forester were all like this it wouldn't be so bad," he remarked, wanly. "I think I know several fellows who would be glad to do it without a cent of pay."

"Wait till you get to heaving a pick," she retorted, "or scaling lumber in a rain, or building a corduroy bridge."

"I don't want to think of anything so dreadful. I want to enjoy this moment. I never was hungrier or happier in my life."

"Do ye good," interjected McFarlane, who had paused to straighten up the coffee-pot. "Most people don't know what hunger means. There's nothing finer in the world than good old-fashioned hunger, provided you've got something to throw into yourself when you come into camp. This is a great place for fish. I think I'll see if I can't jerk a few out."

"Better wait till night," said his daughter. "Mr. Norcross is starving, and so am I. Plain bacon will do me."

The coffee came to a boil, the skillet gave off a wondrous savor, and when the corn and beans began to sizzle, the trailers sat down to their feast in hearty content, with one of the panniers for a table, and the fir-tree for roof. "This is one of the most perfectly appointed dining-rooms in the world," exclaimed the alien.

The girl met his look with a tender smile. "I'm glad you like it, for perhaps we'll stay a week."

"It looks stormy," the Supervisor announced, after a glance at the crests. "I'd like to see a soaking rain—it would end all our worry about fires. The country's very dry on this side the range, and your duty for the present will be to help Tony patrol."

While he talked on, telling the youth how to beat out a small blaze and how to head off a large one, Wayland listened, but heard his instructions only as he sensed the brook, as an accompaniment to Berea's voice, for as she busied herself clearing away the dishes and putting the camp to rights, she sang.

"You're to have the tent," said her father, "and we two huskies will sleep under the shade of this big fir. If you're ever caught out," he remarked to Wayland, "hunt for one of these balsam firs; there's always a dry spot under them. See here!" And he showed him the sheltered circle beneath the tree. "You can always get twigs for kindling from their inner branches," he added, "or you can hew into one of these dead trees and get some pitchy splinters. There's material for everything you want if you know where to find it. Shelter, food, fire are all here for us as they were for the Indians. A ranger who needs a roof all the time is not worth his bacon."

So, one by one, the principles of camping were taught by the kindly old rancher; but the hints which the girl gave were quite as valuable, for Wayland was eager to show her that he could be, and intended to be, a forester of the first class or perish in the attempt.

McFarlane went farther and talked freely of the forest and what it meant to the government. "We're all green at the work," he said, "and we old chaps are only holding the fort against the thieves till you youngsters learn how to make the best use of the domain."

"I can see that it takes more than technical training to enable a man to be Supervisor of a forest," conceded Wayland.

McFarlane was pleased with this remark. "That's true, too. It's a big responsibility. When I first came on, it was mainly patrolling; but now, with a half dozen sawmills, and these 'June Eleventh Homesteads,' and the new ways of marking timber, and the grazing and free-use permits, the office work has doubled. And this is only the beginning. Wait till Colorado has two millions of people, and all these lower valleys are clamoring for water. Then you'll see a new party spring up—right here in our state."

Berrie was glowing with happiness. "Let's stay here till the end of the week," she suggested. "I've always wanted to camp on this lake, and now I'm here I want time to enjoy it."

"We'll stay a day or two," said her father; "but I must get over to that ditch survey which is being made at the head of Poplar, and then Moore is coming over to look at some timber on Porcupine."

The young people cut willow rods and went angling at the outlet of the lake with prodigious success. The water rippled with trout, and in half an hour they had all they could use for supper and breakfast, and, behold, even as they were returning with their spoil they met a covey of grouse strolling leisurely down to the lake's edge. "Isn't it a wonderful place!" exclaimed the happy girl. "I wish we could stay a month."

"It's like being on the Swiss Family Robinson's Island. I never was more content," he said, fervently. "I wouldn't mind staying here all winter."

"I would!" she laughed. "The snow falls four feet deep up here. It's likely there's snow on the divide this minute, and camping in the snow isn't so funny. Some people got snowed in over at Deep Lake last year and nearly all their horses starved before they could get them out. This is a fierce old place in winter-time."

"I can't imagine it," he said, indicating the glowing amphitheater which inclosed the lake. "See how warmly the sun falls into that high basin! It's all as beautiful as the Tyrol."

The air at the moment was golden October, and the dark clouds which lay to the east seemed the wings of a departing rather than an approaching storm; and even as they looked, a rainbow sprang into being, arching the lake as if in assurance of peace and plenty, and the young people, as they turned to face it, stood so close together that each felt the glow of the other's shoulder. The beauty of the scene seemed to bring them together in body as in spirit, and they fell silent.

McFarlane seemed quite unconscious of any necromancy at work upon his daughter. He smoked his pipe, made notes in his field-book, directing an occasional remark toward his apprentice, enjoying in his tranquil, middle-age way the beauty and serenity of the hour.

"This is the kind of thing that makes up for a hard day's ride," he said, jocosely.

As the sunset came on, the young people again loitered down to the water's edge, and there, seated side by side, on a rocky knoll, watched the phantom gold lift from the willows and climb slowly to the cliffs above, while the water deepened in shadow, and busy muskrats marked its glossy surface with long silvery lines. Mischievous camp-birds peered at the couple from the branches of the pines uttering satirical comment, while squirrels, frankly insolent, dropped cones upon their heads and barked in saucy glee.

Wayland forgot all the outside world, forgot that he was studying to be a forest ranger, and was alive only to the fact that in this most bewitching place, in this most entrancing hour, he had the companionship of a girl whose eyes sought his with every new phase of the silent and wonderful scene which shifted swiftly before their eyes like a noiseless yet prodigious drama. The blood in his thin body warmed. He forgot his fatigue, his weakness. He was the poet and the forest lover, and this the heart of the range.

Lightly the golden glory rose till only the highest peaks retained its flame; then it leapt to the clouds behind the peaks, and gorgeously lit their somber sulphurous masses. The edges of the pool grew black as night; the voice of the stream grew stern; and a cold wind began to fall from the heights, sliding like an invisible but palpable icy cataract.

At last the girl rose. "It is getting dark. I must go back and get supper."

"We don't need any supper," he protested.

"Father does, and you'll be hungry before morning," she retorted, with sure knowledge of men.

He turned from the scene reluctantly; but once at the camp-fire cheerfully gave his best efforts to the work in hand, seconding Berrie's skill as best he could.

The trout, deliciously crisp, and some potatoes and batter-cakes made a meal that tempted even his faint appetite, and when the dishes were washed and the towels hung out to dry, deep night possessed even the high summit of stately Ptarmigan.

McFarlane then said: "I'll just take a little turn to see that the horses are all right, and then I think we'd better close in for the night."

When they were alone in the light of the fire, Wayland turned to Berrie: "I'm glad you're here. It must be awesome to camp alone in a wilderness; and yet, I suppose, I must learn to do it."

"Yes, the ranger often has to camp alone, ride alone, and work alone for weeks at a time," she assured him. "A good trailer don't mind a night trip any more than he does a day trip, or if he does he never admits it. Rain, snow, darkness, is all the same to him. Most of the boys are fifteen to forty miles from the post-office."

He smiled ruefully. "I begin to have new doubts about this ranger business. It's a little more vigorous than I thought it was. Suppose a fellow breaks a leg on one of those high trails?"

"He mustn't!" she hastened to say. "He can't afford really to take reckless chances; but then father won't expect as much of you as he does of the old-stagers. You'll have plenty of time to get used to it."

"I may be like the old man's cow and the green shavings, just as I'm getting used to it I'll die."

She didn't laugh at this. "You mustn't be rash; don't jump into any hard jobs for the present; let the other fellow do it."

"But that's not very manly. If I go into the work I ought to be able to take my share of any task that turns up."

"You'd better go slow," she argued. "Wait till you get hardened to it. You need something over your shoulders now," she added; and rose and laid a blanket over him. "You're tired; you'll take a chill if you're not careful."

"You're very considerate," he said, looking up at her gratefully. "But it makes me feel like a child to think I need such care. If honestly trying, if going up against these hills and winds with Spartan courage will do me good, I'm for it. I'm resolved to show to you and your good father that I can learn to ride and pack and cut trail, and do all the rest of it—there's some honor in qualifying as a forester, and I'm going to do it."

"Of course there isn't much in it for you. The pay, even of a full ranger, isn't much, after you count out his outlay for horses and saddles and their feed, and his own feed. It don't leave so very much of his ninety dollars a month."

"I'm not thinking of that," he retorted. "If you had once seen a doctor shake his head over you, as I have, you'd think just being here in this glorious spot, as I am to-night, would be compensation enough. It's a joy to be in the world, and a delight to have you for my teacher."

She was silent under the pleasure of his praise, and he went on: "I know I'm better, and, I'm perfectly certain I can regain my strength. The very odor of these pines and the power of these winds will bring it back to me. See me now, and think how I looked when I came here six weeks ago."

She looked at him with fond agreement. "You are better. When I saw you first I surely thought you were—"

"I know what you thought—and forget it, please! Think of me as one who has touched mother earth again and is on the way to being made a giant. You can't imagine how marvelous, how life-giving all this is to me. It is poetry, it is prophecy, it is fulfilment. I am fully alive again."

McFarlane, upon his return, gave some advice relating to the care of horses. "All this stock which is accustomed to a barn or a pasture will quit you," he warned. "Watch your broncos. Put them on the outward side of your camp when you bed down, and pitch your tent near the trail, then you will hear the brutes if they start back. Some men tie their stock all up; but I usually picket my saddle-horse and hobble the rest."

It was a delightful hour for schooling, and Wayland would have been content to sit there till morning listening; but the air bit, and at last the Supervisor asked: "Have you made your bed? If you have, turn in. I shall get you out early to-morrow." As he saw the bed, he added: "I see you've laid out a bed of boughs. That shows how Eastern you are. We don't do that out here. It's too cold in this climate, and it's too much work. You want to hug the ground—if it's dry."

The weary youth went to his couch with a sense of timorous elation, for he had never before slept beneath the open sky. Over him the giant fir—tall as a steeple—dropped protecting shadow, and looking up he could see the firelight flickering on the wide-spread branches. His bed seemed to promise all the dreams and restful drowse which the books on outdoor life had described, and close by in her tiny little canvas house he could hear the girl in low-voiced conversation with her sire. All conditions seemed right for slumber, and yet slumber refused to come!

After the Supervisor had rolled himself in the blanket, long after all sounds had ceased in the tent, there still remained for the youth a score of manifold excitations to wakefulness. Down on the lake the muskrats and beavers were at their work. Nocturnal birds uttered uncanny, disturbing cries. Some animal with stealthy crackling tread was ranging the hillside, and the roar of the little fall, so far from lulling him to sleep—as he had imagined it would—stimulated his imagination till he could discern in it the beat of scurrying wings and the patter of pernicious padded feet. "If I am appalled by the wilderness now, what would it seem to me were I alone!" he whispered.

Then, too, his bed of boughs discovered unforeseen humps and knobs, and by the time he had adjusted himself to their discomfort, it became evident that his blankets were both too thin and too short. And the gelid air sweeping down from the high places submerged him as if with a flood of icy water. In vain he turned and twisted within his robes. No sooner were his shoulders covered and comfortable than his hip-bones began to ache. Later on the blood of his feet congealed, and in the effort to wrap them more closely, he uncovered his neck and shoulders. The frost became a wolf, the night an oppressor. "I must have a different outfit," he decided. And then thinking that this was but early autumn, he added: "What will it be a month later?" He began to doubt his ability to measure up to the heroic standard of a forest patrol.

The firelight flickered low, and a prowling animal daringly sniffed about the camp, pawing at the castaway fragments of the evening meal. The youth was rigid with fear. "Is it a bear? Shall I call the Supervisor?" he asked himself.

He felt sadly unprotected, and wished McFarlane nearer at hand. "It may be a lion, but probably it is only a coyote, or a porcupine," he concluded, and lay still for what seemed like hours waiting for the beast to gorge himself and go away.

He longed for morning with intense desire, and watched an amazingly luminous star which hung above the eastern cliff, hoping to see it pale and die in dawn light, but it did not; and the wind bit even sharper. His legs ached almost to the cramping-point, and his hip-bones protruded like knots on a log. "I didn't know I had door-knobs on my hips," he remarked, with painful humor, and, looking down at his feet, he saw that a thick rime was gathering on his blanket. "This sleeping out at night isn't what the books crack it up to be," he groaned again, drawing his feet up to the middle of his bed to warm them. "Shall I resign to-morrow? No, I'll stay with it; but I'll have more clothing. I'll have blankets six inches thick. Heaps of blankets—the fleecy kind—I'll have an air-mattress." His mind luxuriated in these details till he fell into an uneasy drowse.



VI

STORM-BOUND

Wayland was awakened by the mellow voice of his chief calling: "All out! All out! Daylight down the creek!" Breathing a prayer of thankfulness, the boy sat up and looked about him. "The long night is over at last, and I am alive!" he said, and congratulated himself.

He drew on his shoes and, stiff and shivering, stood about in helpless misery, while McFarlane kicked the scattered, charred logs together, and fanned the embers into a blaze with his hat. It was heartening to see the flames leap up, flinging wide their gorgeous banners of heat and light, and in their glow the tenderfoot ranger rapidly recovered his courage, though his teeth still chattered and the forest was dark.

"How did you sleep?" asked the Supervisor.

"First rate—at least during the latter part of the night," Wayland briskly lied.

"That's good. I was afraid that Adirondack bed of yours might let the white wolf in."

"My blankets did seem a trifle thin," confessed Norcross.

"It don't pay to sleep cold," the Supervisor went on. "A man wants to wake up refreshed, not tired out with fighting the night wind and frost. I always carry a good bed."

It was instructive to see how quietly and methodically the old mountaineer went about his task of getting the breakfast. First he cut and laid a couple of eight-inch logs on either side of the fire, so that the wind drew through them properly, then placing his dutch-oven cover on the fire, he laid the bottom part where the flames touched it. Next he filled his coffee-pot with water, and set it on the coals. From his pannier he took his dishes and the flour and salt and pepper, arranging them all within reach, and at last laid some slices of bacon in the skillet.

At this stage of the work a smothered cry, half yawn, half complaint, came from the tent. "Oh, hum! Is it morning?" inquired Berrie.

"Morning!" replied her father. "It's going toward noon. You get up or you'll have no breakfast."

Thereupon Wayland called: "Can I get you anything, Miss Berrie? Would you like some warm water?"

"What for?" interposed McFarlane, before the girl could reply.

"To bathe in," replied the youth.

"To bathe in! If a daughter of mine should ask for warm water to wash with I'd throw her in the creek."

Berrie chuckled. "Sometimes I think daddy has no feeling for me. I reckon he thinks I'm a boy."

"Hot water is debilitating, and very bad for the complexion," retorted her father. "Ice-cold water is what you need. And if you don't get out o' there in five minutes I'll dowse you with a dipperful."

This reminded Wayland that he had not yet made his own toilet, and, seizing soap, towel, and brushes, he hurried away down to the beach where he came face to face with the dawn. The splendor of it smote him full in the eyes. From the waveless surface of the water a spectral mist was rising, a light veil, through which the stupendous cliffs loomed three thousand feet in height, darkly shadowed, dim and far. The willows along the western marge burned as if dipped in liquid gold, and on the lofty crags the sun's coming created keen-edged shadows, violet as ink. Truly this forestry business was not so bad after all. It had its compensations.

Back at the camp-fire he found Berrie at work, glowing, vigorous, laughing. Her comradeship with her father was very charming, and at the moment she was rallying him on his method of bread-mixing. "You should rub the lard into the flour," she said. "Don't be afraid to get your hands into it—after they are clean. You can't mix bread with a spoon."

"Sis, I made camp bread for twenty years afore you were born."

"It's a wonder you lived to tell of it," she retorted, and took the pan away from him. "That's another thing you must learn," she said to Wayland. "You must know how to make bread. You can't expect to find bake-shops or ranchers along the way."

In the heat of the fire, in the charm of the girl's presence, the young man forgot the discomforts of the night, and as they sat at breakfast, and the sun rising over the high summits flooded them with warmth and good cheer, and the frost melted like magic from the tent, the experience had all the satisfying elements of a picnic. It seemed that nothing remained to do; but McFarlane said: "Well, now, you youngsters wash up and pack whilst I reconnoiter the stock." And with his saddle and bridle on his shoulder he went away down the trail.

Under Berrie's direction Wayland worked busily putting the camp equipment in proper parcels, taking no special thought of time till the tent was down and folded, the panniers filled and closed, and the fire carefully covered. Then the girl said: "I hope the horses haven't been stampeded. There are bears in this valley, and horses are afraid of bears. Father ought to have been back before this. I hope they haven't quit us."

"Shall I go and see?"

"No, he'll bring 'em—if they're in the land of the living. He picketed his saddle-horse, so he's not afoot. Nobody can teach him anything about trailing horses, and, besides, you might get lost. You'd better keep close to camp."

Thereupon Wayland put aside all responsibility. "Let's see if we can catch some more fish," he urged.

To this she agreed, and together they went again to the outlet of the lake—where the trout could be seen darting to and fro on the clear, dark flood—and there cast their flies till they had secured ten good-sized fish.

"We'll stop now," declared the girl. "I don't believe in being wasteful."

Once more at the camp they prepared the fish for the pan. The sun suddenly burned hot and the lake was still as brass, but great, splendid, leisurely, gleaming clouds were sailing in from the west, all centering about Chief Audobon, and the experienced girl looked often at the sky. "I don't like the feel of the air. See that gray cloud spreading out over the summits of the range, that means something more than a shower. I do hope daddy will overtake the horses before they cross the divide. It's going to pour up there."

"What can I do?"

"Nothing. We'll stay right here and get dinner for him. He'll be hungry when he gets back."

As they were unpacking the panniers and getting out the dishes, thunder broke from the high crags above the lake, and the girl called out:

"Quick! It's going to rain! We must reset the tent and get things under cover."

Once more he was put to shame by the decision, the skill, and the strength with which she went about re-establishing the camp. She led, he followed in every action. In ten minutes the canvas was up, the beds rolled, the panniers protected, the food stored safely; but they were none too soon, for the thick gray veil of rain, which had clothed the loftiest crags for half an hour, swung out over the water—leaden-gray under its folds—and with a roar which began in the tall pines—a roar which deepened, hushed only when the thunder crashed resoundingly from crag to crest—the tempest fell upon the camp and the world of sun and odorous pine vanished almost instantly, and a dark, threatening, and forbidding world took its place.

But the young people—huddled close together beneath the tent—would have enjoyed the change had it not been for the thought of the Supervisor. "I hope he took his slicker," the girl said, between the tearing, ripping flashes of the lightning. "It's raining hard up there."

"How quickly it came. Who would have thought it could rain like this after so beautiful a morning?"

"It storms when it storms—in the mountains," she responded, with the sententious air of her father. "You never can tell what the sky is going to do up here. It is probably snowing on the high divide. Looks now as though those cayuses pulled out sometime in the night and have hit the trail for home. That's the trouble with stall-fed stock. They'll quit you any time they feel cold and hungry. Here comes the hail!" she shouted, as a sharper, more spiteful roar sounded far away and approaching. "Now keep from under!"

"What will your father do?" he called.

"Don't worry about him. He's at home any place there's a tree. He's probably under a balsam somewhere, waiting for this ice to spill out. The only point is, they may get over the divide, and if they do it will be slippery coming back."

For the first time the thought that the Supervisor might not be able to return entered Wayland's mind; but he said nothing of his fear.

The hail soon changed to snow, great, clinging, drowsy, soft, slow-moving flakes, and with their coming the roar died away and the forest became as silent as a grave of bronze. Nothing moved, save the thick-falling, feathery, frozen vapor, and the world was again very beautiful and very mysterious.

"We must keep the fire going," warned the girl. "It will be hard to start after this soaking."

He threw upon the fire all of the wood which lay near, and Berrie, taking the ax, went to the big fir and began to chop off the dry branches which hung beneath, working almost as effectively as a man. Wayland insisted on taking a turn with the tool; but his efforts were so awkward that she laughed and took it away again. "You'll have to take lessons in swinging an ax," she said. "That's part of the job."

Gradually the storm lightened, the snow changed back into rain, and finally to mist; but up on the heights the clouds still rolled wildly, and through their openings the white drifts bleakly shone.

"It's all in the trip," said Berrie. "You have to take the weather as it comes on the trail." As the storm lessened she resumed the business of cooking the midday meal, and at two o'clock they were able to eat in comparative comfort, though the unmelted snow still covered the trees, and water dripped from the branches.

"Isn't it beautiful!" exclaimed Wayland, with glowing boyish face. "The landscape is like a Christmas card. In its way it's quite as beautiful as that golden forest we rode through."

"It wouldn't be so beautiful if you had to wallow through ten miles of it," she sagely responded. "Daddy will be wet to the skin, for I found he didn't take his slicker. However, the sun may be out before night. That's the way the thing goes in the hills."

To the youth, though the peaks were storm-hid, the afternoon was joyous. Berrie was a sweet companion. Under her supervision he practised at chopping wood and took a hand at cooking. At her suggestion he stripped the tarpaulin from her father's bed and stretched it over a rope before the tent, thus providing a commodious kitchen and dining-room. Under this roof they sat and talked of everything except what they should do if the father did not return, and as they talked they grew to even closer understanding.

Though quite unlearned of books, she had something which was much more piquant than anything which theaters and novels could give—she possessed a marvelous understanding of the natural world in which she lived. As the companion of her father on many of his trips, she had absorbed from him, as well as from the forest, a thousand observations of plant and animal life. Seemingly she had nothing of the woman's fear of the wilderness, she scarcely acknowledged any awe of it. Of the bears, and other predatory beasts, she spoke carelessly.

"Bears are harmless if you let 'em alone," she said, "and the mountain-lion is a great big bluff. He won't fight, you can't make him fight; but the mother lion will. She's dangerous when she has cubs—most animals are. I was out hunting grouse one day with a little twenty-two rifle, when all at once, as I looked up along a rocky point I was crossing, I saw a mountain-lion looking at me. First I thought I'd let drive at him; but the chances were against my getting him from there, so I climbed up above him—or where I thought he was—and while I was looking for him I happened to glance to my right, and there he was about fifty feet away looking at me pleasant as you please. Didn't seem to be mad at all—'peared like he was just wondering what I'd do next. I jerked my gun into place, but he faded away. I crawled around to get behind him, and just when I reached the ledge on which he had been standing a few minutes before, I saw him just where I'd been. He had traded places with me. I began to have that creepy feeling. He was so silent and so kind of pleasant-looking I got leery of him. It just seemed like as though I'd dreamed him. He didn't seem real."

Wayland shuddered. "You foolish girl! Why didn't you run?"

"I did. I began to figure then that this was a mother lion, and that her cubs were close by, and that she could just as well sneak up and drop on me from above as not. So I got down and left her alone. It was her popping up now here and now there like a ghost that locoed me. I was sure scared."

Wayland did not enjoy this tale. "I never heard of such folly. Did your father learn of that adventure?"

"Yes, I told him."

"Didn't he forbid your hunting any more?"

"No, indeed! Why should he? He just said it probably was a lioness, and that it was just as well to let her alone. He knows I'm no chicken."

"How about your mother—does she approve of such expeditions?"

"No, mother worries more or less when I'm away; but then she knows it don't do any good. I'm taking all kinds of chances every day, anyhow."

He had to admit that she was better able to care for herself in the wilderness than most men—even Western men—and though he had not yet witnessed a display of her skill with a rifle, he was ready to believe that she could shoot as well as her sire. Nevertheless, he liked her better when engaged in purely feminine duties, and he led the talk back to subjects concerning which her speech was less blunt and manlike.

He liked her when she was joking, for delicious little curves of laughter played about her lips. She became very amusing, as she told of her "visits East," and of her embarrassments in the homes of city friends. "I just have to own up that about all the schooling I've got is from the magazines. Sometimes I wish I had pulled out for town when I was about fourteen; but, you see, I didn't feel like leaving mother, and she didn't feel like letting me go—and so I just got what I could at Bear Tooth." She sprang up. "There's a patch of blue sky. Let's go see if we can't get a grouse."

The snow had nearly all sunk into the ground on their level; but it still lay deep on the heights above, and the torn masses of vapor still clouded the range. "Father has surely had to go over the divide," she said, as they walked down the path along the lake shore. "He'll be late getting back, and a plate of hot chicken will seem good to him."

Together they strolled along the edge of the willows. "The grouse come down to feed about this time," she said. "We'll put up a covey soon."

It seemed to him as though he were re-living the experiences of his ancestors—the pioneers of Michigan—as he walked this wilderness with this intrepid huntress whose alert eyes took note of every moving thing. She was delightfully unconscious of self, of sex, of any doubt or fear. A lovely Diana—strong and true and sweet.

Within a quarter of a mile they found their birds, and she killed four with five shots. "This is all we need," she said, "and I don't believe in killing for the sake of killing. Rangers should set good examples in way of game preservation. They are deputy game-wardens in most states, and good ones, too."

They stopped for a time on a high bank above the lake, while the sunset turned the storm-clouds into mountains of brass and iron, with sulphurous caves and molten glowing ledges. This grandiose picture lasted but a few minutes, and then the Western gates closed and all was again gray and forbidding. "Open and shut is a sign of wet," quoted Berrie, cheerily.

The night rose formidably from the valley while they ate their supper; but Berrie remained tranquil. "Those horses probably went clean back to the ranch. If they did, daddy can't possibly get back before eight o'clock, and he may not get back till to-morrow."



VII

THE WALK IN THE RAIN

Norcross, with his city training, was acutely conscious of the delicacy of the situation. In his sister's circle a girl left alone in this way with a man would have been very seriously embarrassed; but it was evident that Berrie took it all joyously, innocently. Their being together was something which had happened in the natural course of weather, a condition for which they were in no way responsible. Therefore she permitted herself to be frankly happy in the charm of their enforced intimacy.

She had never known a youth of his quality. He was so considerate, so refined, so quick of understanding, and so swift to serve. He filled her mind to the exclusion of unimportant matters like the snow, which was beginning again; indeed, her only anxiety concerned his health, and as he toiled amid the falling flakes, intent upon heaping up wood enough to last out the night, she became solicitous.

"You will be soaked," she warningly cried. "Don't stay out any more. Come to the fire. I'll bring in the wood."

Something primeval, some strength he did not know he possessed sustained him, and he toiled on. "Suppose this snow keeps falling?" he retorted. "The Supervisor will not be able to get back to-night—perhaps not for a couple of nights. We will need a lot of fuel."

He did not voice the fear of the storm which filled his thought; but the girl understood it. "It won't be very cold," she calmly replied. "It never is during these early blizzards; and, besides, all we need to do is to drop down the trail ten miles and we'll be entirely out of it."

"I'll feel safer with plenty of wood," he argued; but soon found it necessary to rest from his labors. Coming in to camp, he seated himself beside her on a roll of blankets, and so together they tended the fire and watched the darkness roll over the lake till the shining crystals seemed to drop from a measureless black arch, soundless and oppressive. The wind died away, and the trees stood as if turned into bronze, moveless, save when a small branch gave way and dropped its rimy burden, or a squirrel leaped from one top to another. Even the voice of the waterfall seemed muffled and remote.

"I'm a long way from home and mother," Wayland said, with a smile; "but—I like it."

"Isn't it fun?" she responded. "In a way it's nicer on account of the storm. But you are not dressed right; you should have waterproof boots. You never can tell when you may be set afoot. You should always go prepared for rain and snow, and, above all, have an extra pair of thick stockings. Your feet are soaked now, aren't they?"

"They are; but your father told me to always dry my boots on my feet, otherwise they'd shrink out of shape."

"That's right, too; but you'd better take 'em off and wring out your socks or else put on dry ones."

"You insist on my playing the invalid," he complained, "and that makes me angry. When I've been over here a month you'll find me a glutton for hardship. I shall be a bear, a grizzly, fearful to contemplate. My roar will affright you."

She laughed like a child at his ferocity. "You'll have to change a whole lot," she said, and drew the blanket closer about his shoulders. "Just now your job is to keep warm and dry. I hope you won't get lonesome over here."

"I'm not going to open a book or read a newspaper. I'm not going to write to a single soul except you. I'll be obliged to report to you, won't I?"

"I'm not the Supervisor."

"You're the next thing to it," he quickly retorted. "You've been my board of health from the very first. I should have fled for home long ago had it not been for you."

Her eyes fell under his glance. "You'll get pretty tired of things over here. It's one of the lonesomest stations in the forest."

"I'll get lonesome for you; but not for the East." This remark, or rather the tone in which it was uttered, brought another flush of consciousness to the girl's face.

"What time is it now?" she asked, abruptly.

He looked at his watch. "Half after eight."

"If father isn't on this side of the divide now he won't try to cross. If he's coming down the slope he'll be here in an hour, although that trail is a tolerably tough proposition this minute. A patch of dead timber on a dark night is sure a nuisance, even to a good man. He may not make it."

"Shall I fire my gun?"

"What for?"

"As a signal to him."

This amused her. "Daddy don't need any hint about direction—what he needs is a light to see the twist of the trail through those fallen logs."

"Couldn't I rig up a torch and go to meet him?"

She put her hand on his arm. "You stay right here!" she commanded. "You couldn't follow that trail five minutes."

"You have a very poor opinion of my skill."

"No, I haven't; but I know how hard it is to keep direction on a night like this and I don't want you wandering around in the timber. Father can take care of himself. He's probably sitting under a big tree smoking his pipe before his fire—or else he's at home. He knows we're all right, and we are. We have wood and grub, and plenty of blankets, and a roof over us. You can make your bed under this fly," she said, looking up at the canvas. "It beats the old balsam as a roof. You mustn't sleep cold again."

"I think I'd better sit up and keep the fire going," he replied, heroically. "There's a big log out there that I'm going to bring in to roll up on the windward side."

"It'll be cold and wet early in the morning, and I don't like to hunt kindling in the snow," she said. "I always get everything ready the night before. I wish you had a better bed. It seems selfish of me to have the tent while you are cold."

One by one—under her supervision—he made preparations for morning. He cut some shavings from a dead, dry branch of fir and put them under the fly, and brought a bucket of water from the creek, and then together they dragged up the dead tree.

Had the young man been other than he was, the girl's purity, candor, and self-reliance would have conquered him, and when she withdrew to the little tent and let fall the frail barrier between them, she was as safe from intrusion as if she had taken refuge behind gates of triple brass. Nothing in all his life had moved him so deeply as her solicitude, her sweet trust in his honor, and he sat long in profound meditation. Any man would be rich in the ownership of her love, he admitted. That he possessed her pity and her friendship he knew, and he began to wonder if he had made a deeper appeal to her than this.

"Can it be that I am really a man to her," he thought, "I who am only a poor weakling whom the rain and snow can appall?"

Then he thought of the effect of this night upon her life. What would Clifford Belden do now? To what deeps would his rage descend if he should come to know of it?

Berrie was serene. Twice she spoke from her couch to say: "You'd better go to bed. Daddy can't get here till to-morrow now."

"I'll stay up awhile yet. My boots aren't entirely dried out."

As the flame sank low the cold bit, and he built up the half-burned logs so that they blazed again. He worked as silently as he could; but the girl again spoke, with sweet authority: "Haven't you gone to bed yet?"

"Oh yes, I've been asleep. I only got up to rebuild the fire."

"I'm afraid you're cold."

"I'm as comfortable as I deserve; it's all schooling, you know. Please go to sleep again." His teeth were chattering as he spoke, but he added: "I'm all right."

After a silence she said: "You must not get chilled. Bring your bed into the tent. There is room for you."

"Oh no, that isn't necessary. I'm standing it very well."

"You'll be sick!" she urged, in a voice of alarm. "Please drag your bed inside the door. What would I do if you should have pneumonia to-morrow? You must not take any risk of a fever."

The thought of a sheltered spot, of something to break the remorseless wind, overcame his scruples, and he drew his bed inside the tent and rearranged it there.

"You're half frozen," she said. "Your teeth are chattering."

"It isn't so much the cold," he stammered. "I'm tired."

"You poor boy!" she exclaimed, and rose in her bed. "I'll get up and heat some water for you."

"I'll be all right, in a few moments," he said. "Please go to sleep. I shall be snug as a bug in a moment."

She watched his shadowy motions from her bed, and when at last he had nestled into his blankets, she said: "If you don't lose your chill I'll heat a rock and put at your feet."

He was ready to cry out in shame of his weakness; but he lay silent till he could command his voice, then he said: "That would drive me from the country in disgrace. Think of what the fellows down below will say when they know of my cold feet."

"They won't hear of it; and, besides, it is better to carry a hot-water bag than to be laid up with a fever."

Her anxiety lessened as his voice resumed its pleasant tenor flow. "Dear girl," he said, "no one could have been sweeter—more like a guardian angel to me. Don't place me under any greater obligation. Go to sleep. I am better—much better now."

She did not speak for a few moments, then in a voice that conveyed to him a knowledge that his words of endearment had deeply moved her, she softly said: "Good night."

He heard her sigh drowsily thereafter once or twice, and then she slept, and her slumber redoubled in him his sense of guardianship, of responsibility. Lying there in the shelter of her tent, the whole situation seemed simple, innocent, and poetic; but looked at from the standpoint of Clifford Belden it held an accusation.

"It cannot be helped," he said. "The only thing we can do is to conceal the fact that we spent the night beneath this tent alone."

In the belief that the way would clear with the dawn, he, too, fell asleep, while the fire sputtered and smudged in the fitful mountain wind.

The second dawn came slowly, as though crippled by the storm and walled back by the clouds. Gradually, austerely, the bleak, white peaks began to define themselves above the firs. The camp-birds called cheerily from the wet branches which overhung the smoldering embers of the fire, and so at last day was abroad in the sky.

With a dull ache in his bones, Wayland crept out to the fire and set to work fanning the coals with his hat, as he had seen the Supervisor do. He worked desperately till one of the embers began to angrily sparkle and to smoke. Then slipping away out of earshot he broke an armful of dry fir branches to heap above the wet, charred logs. Soon these twigs broke into flame, and Berrie, awakened by the crackle of the pine branches, called out: "Is it daylight?"

"Yes, but it's a very dark daylight. Don't leave your warm bed for the dampness and cold out here; stay where you are; I'll get breakfast."

"How are you this morning? Did you sleep?"

"Fine!"

"I'm afraid you had a bad night," she insisted, in a tone which indicated her knowledge of his suffering.

"Camp life has its disadvantages," he admitted, as he put the coffee-pot on the fire. "But I'm feeling better now. I never fried a bird in my life, but I'm going to try it this morning. I have some water heating for your bath." He put the soap, towel, and basin of hot water just inside the tent flap. "Here it is. I'm going to bathe in the lake. I must show my hardihood."

He heard her protesting as he went off down the bank, but his heart was resolute. "I'm not dead yet," he said, grimly. "An invalid who can spend two such nights as these, and still face a cold wind, has some vitality in his bones after all."

When he returned he found the girl full dressed, alert, and glowing; but she greeted him with a touch of shyness and self-consciousness new to her, and her eyes veiled themselves before his glance.

"Now, where do you suppose the Supervisor is?" he asked.

"I hope he's at home," she replied, quite seriously. "I'd hate to think of him camped in the high country without bedding or tent."

"Oughtn't I to take a turn up the trail and see? I feel guilty somehow—I must do something!"

"You can't help matters any by hoofing about in the mud. No, we'll just hold the fort till he comes, that's what he'll expect us to do."

He submitted once more to the force of her argument, and they ate breakfast in such intimacy and good cheer that the night's discomforts and anxieties counted for little. As the sun broke through the clouds Berrie hung out the bedding in order that its dampness might be warmed away.

"We may have to camp here again to-night," she explained, demurely.

"Worse things could happen than that," he gallantly answered. "I wouldn't mind a month of it, only I shouldn't want it to rain or snow all the time."

"Poor boy! You did suffer, didn't you? I was afraid you would. Did you sleep at all?" she asked, tenderly.

"Oh yes, after I came inside; but, of course, I was more or less restless expecting your father to ride up, and then it's all rather exciting business to a novice. I could hear all sorts of birds and beasts stepping and fluttering about. I was scared in spite of my best resolution."

"That's funny; I never feel that way. I slept like a log after I knew you were comfortable. You must have a better bed and more blankets. It's always cold up here."

The sunlight was short-lived. The clouds settled over the peaks, and ragged wisps of gray vapor dropped down the timbered slopes of the prodigious amphitheater in which the lake lay. Again Berrie made everything snug while her young woodsman toiled at bringing logs for the fire.

In truth, he was more elated than he had been since leaving school, for he was not only doing a man's work in the world, he was serving a woman in the immemorial way of the hewer of wood and the carrier of water. His fatigue and the chill of the morning wore away, and he took vast pride in dragging long poles down the hillside, forcing Berrie to acknowledge that he was astonishingly strong. "But don't overdo it," she warned.

At last fully provided for, they sat contentedly side by side under the awning and watched the falling rain as it splashed and sizzled on the sturdy fire. "It's a little like being shipwrecked on a desert island, isn't it?" he said. "As if our boats had drifted away."

At noon she again prepared an elaborate meal. She served potatoes and grouse, hot biscuit with sugar syrup, and canned peaches, and coffee done to just the right color and aroma. He declared it wonderful, and they ate with repeated wishes that the Supervisor might turn up in time to share their feast; but he did not. Then Berrie said, firmly: "Now you must take a snooze, you look tired."

He was, in truth, not only drowsy but lame and tired. Therefore, he yielded to her suggestion.

She covered him with blankets and put him away like a child. "Now you have a good sleep," she said, tenderly. "I'll call you when daddy comes."

With a delicious sense of her protecting care he lay for a few moments listening to the drip of the water on the tent, then drifted away into peace and silence.

When he woke the ground was again covered with snow, and the girl was feeding the fire with wood which her own hands had supplied.

Hearing him stir, she turned and fixed her eyes upon him with clear, soft gaze. "How do you feel by now?" she asked.

"Quite made over," he replied, rising alertly.

His cheer, however, was only pretense. He was greatly worried. "Something has happened to your father," he said. "His horse has thrown him, or he has slipped and fallen." His peace and exultation were gone. "How far is it down to the ranger station?"

"About twelve miles."

"Don't you think we'd better close camp and go down there? It is now three o'clock; we can walk it in five hours."

She shook her head. "No, I think we'd better stay right here. It's a long, hard walk, and the trail is muddy."

"But, dear girl," he began, desperately, "it won't do for us to camp here—alone—in this way another night. What will Cliff say?"

She flamed red, then whitened. "I don't care what Cliff thinks—I'm done with him—and no one that I really care about would blame us." She was fully aware of his anxiety now. "It isn't our fault."

"It will be my fault if I keep you here longer!" he answered. "We must reach a telephone and send word out. Something may have happened to your father."

"I'm not worried a bit about him. It may be that there's been a big snowfall up above us—or else a windstorm. The trail may be blocked; but don't worry. He may have to go round by Lost Lake pass." She pondered a moment. "I reckon you're right. We'd better pack up and rack down the trail to the ranger's cabin. Not on my account, but on yours. I'm afraid you've taken cold."

"I'm all right, except I'm very lame; but I am anxious to go on. By the way, is this ranger Settle married?"

"No, his station is one of the lonesomest cabins on the forest. No woman will stay there."

This made Wayland ponder. "Nevertheless," he decided, "we'll go. After all, the man is a forest officer, and you are the Supervisor's daughter."

She made no further protest, but busied herself closing the panniers and putting away the camp utensils. She seemed to recognize that his judgment was sound.

It was after three when they left the tent and started down the trail, carrying nothing but a few toilet articles.

He stopped at the edge of the clearing. "Should we have left a note for the Supervisor?"

She pointed to their footprints. "There's all the writing he needs," she assured him, leading the way at a pace which made him ache. She plashed plumply into the first puddle in the path. "No use dodging 'em," she called over her shoulder, and he soon saw that she was right.

The trees were dripping, the willows heavy with water, and the mud ankle-deep—in places—but she pushed on steadily, and he, following in her tracks, could only marvel at her strength and sturdy self-reliance. The swing of her shoulders, the poise of her head, and the lithe movement of her waist, made his own body seem a poor thing.

For two hours they zigzagged down a narrow canyon heavily timbered with fir and spruce—a dark, stern avenue, crossed by roaring streams, and filled with frequent boggy meadows whereon the water lay mid-leg deep.

"We'll get out of this very soon," she called, cheerily.

By degrees the gorge widened, grew more open, more genial. Aspen thickets of pale-gold flashed upon their eyes like sunlight, and grassy bunches afforded firmer footing, but on the slopes their feet slipped and slid painfully. Still Berea kept her stride. "We must get to the middle fork before dark," she stopped to explain, "for I don't know the trail down there, and there's a lot of down timber just above the station. Now that we're cut loose from our camp I feel nervous. As long as I have a tent I am all right; but now we are in the open I worry. How are you standing it?" She studied him with keen and anxious glance, her hand upon his arm.

"Fine as a fiddle," he replied, assuming a spirit he did not possess, "but you are marvelous. I thought cowgirls couldn't walk?"

"I can do anything when I have to," she replied. "We've got three hours more of it." And she warningly exclaimed: "Look back there!"

They had reached a point from which the range could be seen, and behold it was covered deep with a seamless robe of new snow.

"That's why dad didn't get back last night. He's probably wallowing along up there this minute." And she set off again with resolute stride. Wayland's pale face and labored breath alarmed her. She was filled with love and pity, but she pressed forward desperately.

As he grew tired, Wayland's boots, loaded with mud, became fetters, and every slope greasy with mire seemed an almost insurmountable barricade. He fell several times, but made no outcry. "I will not add to her anxiety," he said to himself.

At last they came to the valley floor, over which a devastating fire had run some years before, and which was still covered with fallen trees in desolate confusion. Here the girl made her first mistake. She kept on toward the river, although Wayland called attention to a trail leading to the right up over the low grassy hills. For a mile the path was clear, but she soon found herself confronted by an endless maze of blackened tree-trunks, and at last the path ended abruptly.

Dismayed and halting, she said: "We've got to go back to that trail which branched off to the right. I reckon that was the highland trail which Settle made to keep out of the swamp. I thought it was a trail from Cameron Peak, but it wasn't. Back we go."

She was suffering keenly now, not on her own account, but on his, for she could see that he was very tired, and to climb up that hill again was like punishing him a second time.

When she picked up the blazed trail it was so dark that she could scarcely follow it; but she felt her way onward, turning often to be sure that he was following. Once she saw him fall, and cried out: "It's a shame to make you climb this hill again. It's all my fault. I ought to have known that that lower road led down into the timber."

Standing close beside him in the darkness, knowing that he was weary, wet, and ill, she permitted herself the expression of her love and pity. Putting her arm about him, she drew his cheek against her own, saying: "Poor boy, your hands are cold as ice." She took them in her own warm clasp. "Oh, I wish we had never left the camp! What does it matter what people say?" Then she broke down and wailed. "I shall never forgive myself if you—" Her voice failed her.



He bravely reassured her: "I'm not defeated, I'm just tired. That's all. I can go on."

"But you are shaking."

"That is merely a nervous chill. I'm good for another hour. It's better to keep moving, anyhow."

She thrust her hand under his coat and laid it over his heart. "You are tired out," she said, and there was anguish in her voice. "Your heart is pounding terribly. You mustn't do any more climbing. And, hark, there's a wolf!"

He listened. "I hear him; but we are both armed. There's no danger from wild animals."

"Come!" she said, instantly recovering her natural resolution. "We can't stand here. The station can't be far away. We must go on."



VIII

THE OTHER GIRL

The girl's voice stirred the benumbed youth into action again, and he followed her mechanically. His slender stock of physical strength was almost gone, but his will remained unbroken. At every rough place she came back to him to support him, to hearten him, and so he crept on through the darkness, falling often, stumbling against the trees, slipping and sliding, till at last his guide, pitching down a sharp slope, came directly upon a wire fence.

"Glory be!" she called. "Here is a fence, and the cabin should be near, although I see no light. Hello! Tony!"

No voice replied, and, keeping Wayland's hand, she felt her way along the fence till it revealed a gate; then she turned toward the roaring of the stream, which grew louder as they advanced. "The cabin is near the falls, that much I know," she assured him. Then a moment later she joyfully cried out: "Here it is!"

Out of the darkness a blacker, sharper shadow rose. Again she called, but no one answered. "The ranger is away," she exclaimed, in a voice of indignant alarm. "I do hope he left the door unlocked."

Too numb with fatigue, and too dazed by the darkness to offer any aid, Wayland waited—swaying unsteadily on his feet—while she tried the door. It was bolted, and with but a moment's hesitation, she said: "It looks like a case of breaking and entering. I'll try a window." The windows, too, were securely fastened. After trying them all, she came back to where Wayland stood. "Tony didn't intend to have anybody pushing in," she decided. "But if the windows will not raise they will smash."

A crash of glass followed, and with a feeling that it was all part of a dream, Wayland waited while the girl made way through the broken sash into the dark interior. Her next utterance was a cry of joy: "Oh, but it's nice and warm in here! I can't open the door. You'll have to come in the same way I did."

He was too weak and too irresolute to respond immediately, and, reaching out, she took him by the arms and dragged him across the sill. Her strength seemed prodigious. A delicious warmth, a grateful dryness, a sense of shelter enfolded him like a garment. The place smelled deliciously of food, of fire, of tobacco.

Leading him toward the middle of the room, Berrie said: "Stand here till I strike a light."

As her match flamed up Norcross found himself in a rough-walled cabin, in which stood a square cook-stove, a rude table littered with dishes, and three stools made of slabs. It was all very rude; but it had all the value of a palace at the moment.

The girl's quick eye saw much else. She located an oil-lamp, some pine-wood, and a corner cupboard. In a few moments the lamp was lit, the stove refilled with fuel, and she was stripping Wayland's wet coat from his back, cheerily discoursing as she did so. "Here's one of Tony's old jackets, put that on while I see if I can't find some dry stockings for you. Sit right down here by the stove; put your feet in the oven. I'll have a fire in a jiffy. There, that's right. Now I'll start the coffee-pot." She soon found the coffee, but it was unground. "Wonder, where he keeps his coffee-mill." She rummaged about for a few minutes, then gave up the search. "Well, no matter, here's the coffee, and here's a hammer. One of the laws of the trail is this: If you can't do a thing one way, do it another."

She poured the coffee beans into an empty tomato-can and began to pound them with the end of the hammer handle, laughing at Wayland's look of wonder and admiration. "Necessity sure is the mother of invention out here. How do you feel by now? Isn't it nice to own a roof and four walls? I'm going to close up that window as soon as I get the coffee started. Are you warming up?"

"Oh yes, I'm all right now," he replied; but he didn't look it, and her own cheer was rather forced. He was in the grasp of a nervous chill, and she was deeply apprehensive of what the result of his exposure might be. It seemed as if the coffee would never come to a boil.

"I depend on that to brace you up," she said.

After hanging a blanket over the broken window, she set out some cold meat and a half dozen baking-powder biscuits, which she found in the cupboard, and as soon as the coffee was ready she poured it for him; but she would not let him leave the fire. She brought his supper to him and sat beside him while he ate and drank.

"You must go right to bed," she urged, as she studied his weary eyes. "You ought to sleep for twenty-four hours."

The hot, strong coffee revived him physically and brought back a little of his courage, and he said: "I'm ashamed to be such a weakling."

"Now hush," she commanded. "It's not your fault that you are weak. Now, while I am eating my supper you slip off your wet clothes and creep into Tony's bunk, and I'll fill one of these syrup-cans with hot water to put at your feet."

It was of no use for him to protest against her further care. She insisted, and while she ate he meekly carried out her instructions, and from the delicious warmth and security of his bed watched her moving about the stove till the shadows of the room became one with the dusky figures of his sleep.

A moment later something falling on the floor woke him with a start, and, looking up, he found the sun shining, and Berrie confronting him with anxious face. "Did I waken you?" she asked. "I'm awfully sorry. I'm trying to be extra quiet. I dropped a pan. How do you feel this morning?"

He pondered this question a moment. "Is it to-morrow or the next week?"

She laughed happily. "It's only the next day. Just keep where you are till the sun gets a little higher." She drew near and put a hand on his brow. "You don't feel feverish. Oh, I hope this trip hasn't set you back."

He laid his hands together, and then felt of his pulse. "I don't seem to have a temperature. I just feel lazy, limp and lazy; but I'm going to get up, if you'll just leave the room for a moment—"

"Don't try it now. Wait till you have had your breakfast. You'll feel stronger then."

He yielded again to the force of her will, and fell back into a luxurious drowse hearing the stove roar and the bacon sizzle in the pan. There was something primitive and broadly poetic in the girl's actions. Through the haze of the kitchen smoke she enlarged till she became the typical frontier wife, the goddess of the skillet and the coffee-pot, the consort of the pioneer, equally skilled with the rifle and the rolling-pin. How many millions of times had this scene been enacted on the long march of the borderman from the Susquehanna to the Bear Tooth Range?

Into his epic vision the pitiful absurdity of his own part in the play broke like a sad discord. "Of course, it is not my fault that I am a weakling," he argued. "Only it was foolish for me to thrust myself into this stern world. If I come safely out of this adventure I will go back to the sheltered places where I belong."

At this point came again the disturbing realization that this night of struggle, and the ministrations of his brave companion had involved him deeper in a mesh from which honorable escape was almost impossible. The ranger's cabin, so far from being an end of their compromising intimacy, had added and was still adding to the weight of evidence against them both. The presence of the ranger or the Supervisor himself could not now save Berea from the gossips.

She brought his breakfast to him, and sat beside him while he ate, chatting the while of their good fortune. "It is glorious outside, and I am sure daddy will get across to-day, and Tony is certain to turn up before noon. He probably went down to Coal City to get his mail."

"I must get up at once," he said, in a panic of fear and shame. "The Supervisor must not find me laid out on my back. Please leave me alone for a moment."

She went out, closing the door behind her, and as he crawled from his bed every muscle in his body seemed to cry out against being moved. Nevertheless, he persisted, and at last succeeded in putting on his clothes, even his shoes—though he found tying the laces the hardest task of all—and he was at the wash-basin bathing his face and hands when Berrie hurriedly re-entered. "Some tourists are coming," she announced, in an excited tone. "A party of five or six people, a woman among them, is just coming down the slope. Now, who do you suppose it can be? It would be just our luck if it should turn out to be some one from the Mill."

He divined at once the reason for her dismay. The visit of a woman at this moment would not merely embarrass them both, it would torture Berrie. "What is to be done?" he asked, roused to alertness.

"Nothing; all we can do is to stand pat and act as if we belonged here."

"Very well," he replied, moving stiffly toward the door. "Here's where I can be of some service. I am an excellent white liar."

As our hero crawled out into the brilliant sunshine some part of his courage came back to him. Though lame in every muscle, he was not ill. That was the surprising thing. His head was clear, and his breath full and deep. "My lungs are all right," he said to himself. "I'm not going to collapse." And he looked round him with a new-born admiration of the wooded hills which rose in somber majesty on either side the roaring stream. "How different it all looks this morning," he said, remembering the deep blackness of the night.

The beat of hoofs upon the bridge drew his attention to the cavalcade, which the keen eyes of the girl had detected as it came over the ridge to the east. The party consisted of two men and two women and three pack-horses completely outfitted for the trail.

One of the women, spurring her horse to the front, rode serenely up to where Wayland stood, and called out: "Good morning. Are you the ranger?"

"No, I'm only the guard. The ranger has gone down the trail."

He perceived at once that the speaker was an alien like himself, for she wore tan-colored riding-boots, a divided skirt of expensive cloth, and a jaunty, wide-rimmed sombrero. She looked, indeed, precisely like the heroine of the prevalent Western drama. Her sleeves, rolled to the elbow, disclosed shapely brown arms, and her neck, bare to her bosom, was equally sun-smit; but she was so round-cheeked, so childishly charming, that the most critical observer could find no fault with her make-up.

One of the men rode up. "Hello, Norcross. What are you doing over here?"

The youth smiled blandly. "Good morning, Mr. Belden. I'm serving my apprenticeship. I'm in the service now."

"The mischief you are!" exclaimed the other. "Where's Tony?"

"Gone for his mail. He'll return soon. What are you doing over here, may I ask?"

"I'm here as guide to Mr. Moore. Mr. Moore, this is Norcross, one of McFarlane's men. Mr. Moore is connected with the tie-camp operations of the railway."

Moore was a tall, thin man with a gray beard and keen blue eyes. "Where's McFarlane? We were to meet him here. Didn't he come over with you?"

"We started together, but the horses got away, and he was obliged to go back after them. He also is likely to turn up soon."

"I am frightfully hungry," interrupted the girl. "Can't you hand me out a hunk of bread and meat? We've been riding since daylight."

Berrie suddenly appeared at the door. "Sure thing," she called out. "Slide down and come in."

Moore removed his hat and bowed. "Good morning, Miss McFarlane, I didn't know you were here. You know my daughter Siona?"