It was good to leave the Valley road and go into seclusion and shelter on the Forest trail; for a hurricane September wind was blowing, the kind of Western wind that the Eastern woman with a big hat thinks is possessed by ten thousand devils; the kind of wind that the Eastern office man with sensitive eyes curses with tears that are not grief; the kind of wind that makes the Westerner put screw nails in his hat and look out for the fire guard round wheat, stock and timber.

Such a different home-going he had planned from this visitation of dumb devils that obsessed them both! He used to dream at night in the Desert of the day, perhaps, coming when they should set out together adventuring a life joy in the Forests; his Forests; when he would show her the golden cottonwoods and the pale birches nursing the pineries to strong maturity; and the fire blisters on the firs; and the sugar blisters on the sugar pines; and the rain of green-gray tempered light from the under side of the funereal hemlocks; and the park like glades of the wonderfully straight and serried soldier ranks of the engleman spruce and the lodge-pole pines; and the larches yellow as gold dust to the touch of the alchemist autumn. He wanted to bring out his violin some day with her and see if they could catch the exact tone and pitch of the pines, when they began harping those age-old melodies of Pan: they were harping them to-day in the high wind; he was sure it was the same as the bass undertone of a big orchestra. Had she ever noticed the way the seeds came fluffing out of the cinnamon cones and the asters and the golden rod and the fire flower in September, for all the world like fairies sailing pixie parachutes? People said that autumn was sad, it presaged death! Did it? A Forester did not see it so; he saw the triumphal procession of the years lighted to its consummation by the flaming torches of ten thousand golden twinkling gay, recklessly gay flowers and trees—the cottonwood and the poplar and the larch, the cone flower and the golden rod and the aster! But to-day, he could not say a word. They were no longer his Forests. He had been cast out from his life work—the continuity of a National Life Work broken—because he had dared to interfere with the petty plans of peanut politicians and public plunderers.

"It is level here! Let us gallop out of this bare burn to the shelter of the evergreens," she said. "I don't mind wind, but I'd just as soon get under cover where it couldn't lash us so."

And the horses came chugging and breathing hard up on the sheltered trail below the evergreens. She reined her horse to the slowest of walks.

"Did you see the news editor before you left town?" she asked.

"Yes, he came over to my hotel last night about twelve o'clock. He had the biggest fool-scheme you ever heard of my running for Congress and buying a paper to boost out the Ring and all that! Thunder, I don't want to run! I've no ax to grind! I prefer to stay a free lance in the fighting ranks!"

"And do you think the fellows, who want to run and have an ax to grind, do best for the Nation?" asked Eleanor. "Why wouldn't you run if the people demanded it?"

"There is the plain brutal fact that it takes money," explained Wayland. "I haven't the ambition; and I have less money. I haven't more than will set me up on some little one-horse irrigation farm. Oh, I know some fool had been filling him up about my having rich friends East, who would put up money for this campaign and finance a new kind of newspaper for the Valley! I'd like to knock the fool's head off who told him that! It's all a lie! Of course, I knew lots of moneyed chaps at Yale; but thunderation, I'd have to want public office a good deal harder than I do to go round cap in hand! Why, Eleanor, a fellow who would do that wouldn't be worth shucks to represent the people."

"Did you tell him that?" asked Eleanor.

"Yes and more! I told him he was clean plumb fool-crazy! Why, Eleanor, when that fellow was fired out of his job yesterday morning, he hadn't ten dollars ahead in the world! I'm not a bank, myself; but then I haven't a wife and kiddies. Do you know, Eleanor, that fellow had more pluck than I would have had under the same circumstances? I couldn't let the results of this kind of a fight come down on a woman."

"What did he say when you told him he was crazy?"

"Oh, went locoed clean out of his head, kicked my hat off the bed post, took out a fiver, said, 'Wayland, that's my last! I'll bet it a hundred odd you do the very thing I'm outlining tonight.'"

"It was a safe bet," said Eleanor. "He had come to see me before he went to you! I was the person, who told him you had a friend, who would put up the money. I didn't tell him who the friend was; for it happens to be myself. No: you needn't blow up, Dick; or drop dead of apoplexy! He didn't come to tell me, or ask a woman's money! He had come hunting you; and I pumped it out of him. He's a brick not to mention my name to you. I like that in a man; and I am going to do it, Dick; and you needn't blow up with rage! You can swear if it would relieve pressure; but I am going to do it! I am going to do it at once! Don't you see what a cowardly foolish thing it would be of you to give up and slink into a hole just because you're defeated? It's just what you said would happen that night on the Ridge. Don't you remember, you said it was bound to be a losing fight; and I said it didn't matter a bit if a man were crucified long as the cause won out? Well, you sent me the note saying you had set out on the Trail and would never quit till you got the Man Higher Up. How are you going to get the Man Higher Up if you don't go right after him in the House and the Senate? They've crucified you; and it's going to be the making of you. Men don't destroy an opponent unless they fear him! If he's a fool, they give him rope enough to hang himself; but if they fear him, they slander him and blacken him and misrepresent him and try to destroy him! Well, they've done all that to you and tried to destroy you; and instead of destroying you, they've only made the people call on you for a leader! Don't you see what a cowardly thing it would be to slink away now because you are defeated? Why, that's the very time a man can't afford to quit, and still call himself a man. No, don't try to stop me! I lay awake all last night thinking it out! They'll not have a chance to call you a woman-made man! I'll place a certain amount with my lawyer for Mr. Williams. You know my father always helped the Mission School more or less; and a woman is supposed to be soft on Missions. Mr. Williams will loan it to the news editor. Only, I may as well tell you, Dick, you are not going to be allowed to stop now! You wrote me that a person couldn't stab certain things to life and then expect them to lie quiet as if nothing had happened. That cuts both ways. Men are pretty good egotists; but I wonder if you ever thought what that means with me, with the people you have prodded up to resent the Ring in the Valley here. Do you know Dick, if you would quit now, I'd despise myself for ever having loved you."

Wayland could not answer. His eyes had filled. He rode with his hand on the pommel of the saddle. Her words had fallen like whiplashes. It was true. You could not cut out and disconnect with life. He had dreamed of this last ride as a sort of mid-heaven ecstasy; and behold, instead of love's dream, the lifting kick to a limp spine. If only one's friends would oftener give us that lifting kick instead of the softening sympathy! If only they would brace our back bone instead of our wish bone!

Then, she turned to him with a sudden tenderness: "What a beast I am to speak so to you when you've just had the blow of public dismissal on top of five years' continuous grilling," and he saw that the flame in her cheeks, in her eyes, was not anger but a gust of passionate love.

"I can't thank you Eleanor," he said. "This is beyond thanks."

"And your old editor man was so funny about it," she went on. "You know Dick, I think he had really come round to the hotel to have a consolation drink with you; and he almost let it out; but just at the last moment he changed the word and said he'd come 'to shake' with you on being dismissed together."

"When do you leave?" asked Wayland dully.

"I don't leave! I haven't the slightest intention of ever leaving this Valley! Why, Dick, would you have me exchange this splendid big free new life where men and women do things, for a parish existence—working slippers for a curate and talking dress, Dick—dress like the Colonel's wife, and chronicling what Shakespeare calls 'small beer'? I don't intend ever to leave the Valley! Tennyson sung of 'the federation of the world,' Dick! You and I are seeing it in the making! Think of the fun of my staying and seeing it and having a finger in the making, just a little quiet finger that nobody knows about but you and me! United States of the World, Dick; and you are going after the Man Higher Up just as you went after those blackguards into the Desert." She laughed joyously, joyous as a child, swinging out her arms to the sweep of the roaring Forest wind. "Don't look shocked. I'll not stay on alone at the Ranch House for the Rookery to talk about! I'll insist on the foreman marrying an aged house keeper for me; or I'll move over to the Mission School; or—Oh, I'll plan out something; but I am not going to leave the West."

Wayland suddenly wheeled his horse across her way and faced her. "So you've been trouncing the hide off my back for an hour or more to make me believe all this doesn't mean renunciation? They splashed their filthy hogwash on your skirts to foil me; and that was nothing! The fight was to go on just the same. I was not to stop because of any injury that came to you. Then, they assassinated your father; and you know as well as I do he was shot down by that drunken Shanty Town sot in mistake for me; but the fight is to go on just the same. That, too, is nothing if the cause be won. Now, you take a slice of your fortune and slam it into the cause, backing me; and you renounce everything that gives meaning to life for a woman, pretending that renunciation is a privilege—"

"It is," interrupted Eleanor, "if it weaves the thing worth while into the warp and woof of your life so it can never be anything but a part of you! Turn your broncho round here and ride along side of me. Look at our Mountain ahead! It isn't a Cross: it's a Crown! Do you think I'm going to push a crown away from myself for the sake of having a lot of flunkeys in a land I don't know bending themselves in their middle at me all my life?" She laughed joyously, flinging her arms wide to the drive and toss of the rolling wind tunneling up the trail on their backs. She had pulled off her hat and the wind tossed forward her hair in a frame of curls round an enamel miniature that always haunted Wayland. "I love it," she said, "the harder it blows, the harder I want to ride! You remember that night coming down the Ridge in the storm? It was like Love and Life! And smell the air, Dick! It has all the sunbeams of the summer imprisoned, done up in balsam fir and balm of gilead and spices! Exchange this life in the open, here, in the very thick of things doing, for that ancient tapestry plush upholstery blue-book existence?"

"I can't ask you, Eleanor! I haven't a thing on earth to offer but a broken reputation and a lot of plans in the ditch! I ought never to have let you know I loved you! I ought never to have let you care for me! You know what you think and you know what I think of a man who lets a woman give all. He isn't worthy of her. You know you have never been out of my thoughts day or night since I met you, dear! I couldn't have come through that Desert thing alive without you; and I'll hold you in my heart every day of my life till I die." He had taken off his hat and kicked the stirrups free and was riding with loose rein.

When a man tells a woman that he is down and out financially and dare not ask her to marry him, do you think there is an end of it, dear reader? Do you think a Silenus would hesitate and stickle and scruple over a point of honor; though some of us have seen Silenus blunder into a paradise which he promptly transformed into a sty? And do you think the descendant of the Man of the Iron Hand thought anything less of her lover for refusing to accept renunciation as his right? If Wayland could have trusted himself to look at her, he would have seen that she was riding with a whimsical smile. They came to a bend in the upward climbing trail that overlooked the Valley and faced the opal shining peak.

"There goes the buckboard," remarked Wayland.

"Dick," she said, "I'll write my lawyer about placing the loan in the bank at once. You need not lose any time."

"But, I can't take that, Eleanor! I haven't any security on earth to offer you."

"Oh, yes you have! I've thought all that out, too. You have the very best security I ever want."

"What?" asked Wayland incredulously. "Do you mean you trust to my honesty? Good intentions aren't usually a banking proposition—"

"You will do as security," she said.

Was it the old mountain talking again; or was it the break in her voice? Their eyes met. He had slipped from his horse.

"Don't," she cried averting her eyes with a tremor in her voice. "I couldn't bear This to be of Self! If I were a man, you'd shake hands with me and call it a bargain. Look Dick! We're in the light of the Cross! Shake hands with me! Is it a bargain?"

His hands closed over both of hers. There were tears in his eyes. He did not break out with any of the wild terms that had clamored and clamored for utterance these weeks past. He did not say any of the things that men and women say at such times in books and plays. They paused so, she on horseback, he standing at her side, on the crest of the Ridge gazing down on the Valley in the light of the Cross.

"So my old Mountain is talking to you, too?" she said. "Do you remember, Dick?"

"It's so God-blessed beautiful, Eleanor," he answered. "I can't thank you! If I lived a thousand years, I couldn't live out my thanks. I could only put up a bluff of trying."

"Dick the nth," she laughed whimsically, "Dick the nth for the United States of the World."

Suddenly he looked up at her. The lashes did not veil quick enough. He caught the veil wide open. He had thought he knew before. Now, he knew that he had but touched the outer margin of her love, of the wealth of her nature, of the reach and grasp of her spirit. She felt the grip of the strong hands closed over hers.

"Mine alder-liefest," he whispered in the old clean unused phrase.

"Is it a bargain?"

"Bargain?" repeated Wayland.

Then, they both laughed. She had him at such an obvious disadvantage. I do not intend to tell how far the afternoon shadows had stretched out when Eleanor exclaimed with a jump; "Dick: the buckboard is out of sight." I do not think either of them as lovers of horses ever offered adequate reason for having ridden their bronchos such a hard pace up grade the last ten miles that the ponies came down the Ridge to the Valley road a lather of sweat.

"You are sure," he had asked as they came out of the evergreens, "that you'll never regret?"

"Mr. Matthews intended to leave to-morrow, Dick. Do you think you could persuade him to stay over a day?"

It was Mrs. Williams who sensed something unusual as the ponies came down one of the by-paths from the Ridge.

"My dear, look at their faces! I do believe it has!" Then to Eleanor, "Will you come in the rig? Are you tired?"

"I think I shall," said Eleanor.

"You've ridden y'r nags uncommon hard, Wayland," observed Matthews.

Eleanor had ascended to the back seat. Wayland had tied the bridle rein of her horse to the rear and was riding abreast of the front seat.

"I wish you could make it convenient to put off your departure for a day or two," began Wayland, very red.

"Eh? What's that?" cried Matthews; and when he looked to the back seat Eleanor and the little gray haired lady in plain back mourning bonnet were going on as fool-women will, and Williams was risking a fall out leaning over the seat shaking hands with Wayland. Somebody was flourishing a red cotton handkerchief; two for ten cents, they sell them in Smelter City. It was Williams who put a check to what Eleanor called a 'loadful of idiots.' "The wind is blowing towards the snow," he said; "but I don't like that column of smoke rising from the Homestead slope in this high gale. That Irish sot went home roaring drunk by the stage yesterday. What will you bet the fire didn't start in the timber slash?"

Wayland gave only one look. "It isn't my job any more," he said, "but I can't stand seeing that."

He was off at a gallop. They saw the sparks strike from the stones as he turned up the Ridge Trail.

A week had passed. The fire had been put out with little damage except from O'Finnigan's timber slash to the lake beneath the upper snows. A new Ranger was in charge. As for O'Finnigan, like Calamity, he had dropped as completely from the Valley's knowledge as if the earth had swallowed him. The Valley, in fact, had given small thought to the mad squaw or the drunken Irishman. The Valley had had other things to talk about. There was the coming fall campaign, and Wayland's name as reform candidate, and Wayland's quiet marriage to the daughter of the dead sheep king. Eleanor and Wayland had gone round through the Pass to the Lake Behind the Peak, where he had dreamed what form of triangulation thoughts must take from the star in the water to the star on the other side of the Holy Cross; where the little waves lipped and lisped and laved the reeds; where they two could drink and drink unseen of the joy of the waters of life before the opening of the political battle.

"Make him tell y' of all that happened in th' Pass when A was with him," Matthews had called as they rode away up the narrowing trail to the jubilant shouting of the canyon waters, the little mule leading the pack ponies.

Mrs. Williams stood on the upper piazza of the Mission School waving and waving. The cottonwoods were raining down showers of gold; and the pines were clicking their gypsy tambourines; and the golden torches of countless yellow autumn flowers lighted the triumphal procession of the year to its consummation. Against the opal crown of the Holy Cross Mountain, the yellowed larches tossed flaming torches to the very sky.

"They seem to be riding away to a world of dreams," said the little lady in black.

Mr. Bat Brydges and Senator Moyese walked slowly and reflectively past the Range Cabin towards the charred burn and timber slash of O'Finnigan's abandoned homestead.

"It's that damned rant the old fellow let off in the court room," said Brydges.

"Rant doesn't win elections, Brydges! It has to be fought out! Sooner we accept the challenge and put 'em to bed for good, the better! Money talks, Brydges!"

"But that's just it, Senator! Money does talk; and some body's money has talked when the Independent sold out to Joe!"

"Fool and his money soon parted, Brydges! Only, in this case, I've a suspicion it's a Her! Never fear a known enemy, Brydges! It's the unknown factors you want to look out for! F'r instance, there is this sot of a drunken Shanty Town Irishman? What's become of him? Did he burn himself, when he set fire to the slash?"

They had paused opposite that fallen giant which bridged the Gully where Wayland had laid the saplings to cross to the Rim Rocks.

"That's a fine one; the fire didn't bring that one down! Been cheesy heart wood! Wonder who placed the saplings for a bridge? Think I'll cross and go down to the ranch by the Rim Rocks, Brydges!"

"Then, excuse me, Mr. Senator! I go back this way! Napoleon had aversion to mice! I've an aversion to wire walking."

He saw Moyese, hands in pockets, stroll along the great log bridging the Gully. Mid-way, he paused as if in contempt of Brydges' timidity. "Bark gives a little," he said, pressing his whole weight up and down flexibly.

"I wish you wouldn't do that, Senator," called Brydges. "Trunk looks to me as if the fire had run through the punk!"

Even as he spoke, he saw it happen, Calamity glide on the far end of the log, utter a maniacal laugh, throw her shawl to the winds and bound forward.

"Go back, you she-devil! Look out, Senator! That log won't stand the weight of two—"

There was the flash of a knife in her hand. Moyese had jumped from the stabbing onslaught—when he lost his balance: the tree crunched, bent, doubled like a jack knife, and plunged in a swirl of smoke and dust to the bottom of the Gully. It had been burnt through to the green mossed outer bark. When Brydges looked fearfully over the bank, the Indian woman had crushed below the log; and Moyese lay very still, his face to the sky, his left hand in his pocket, his right hand thrown out as if to ward a blow, gashed and bloody, whether from rock or knife cut, one could not tell.

I do not intend to repeat the "Smelter City Herald's" flare head announcement of "the deplorable and tragical accident that cut short one of the most promising political careers in the United States." "Senator Moyese had long been accustomed to search the mountains in autumn for seeds and roots of specimen flowers for his herbarium, of which he had made a hobby. That reckless disregard of danger for which he was famous, etc., etc." You'll find the salient features of it all in "Who's Who." Pad that out with Mr. Bat Brydges' imagination and devotion; and you will have an idea of the sorrow that convulsed the "Smelter City Herald."

The opposition paper opined "He would hardly have retained the confidence of the Valley had he lived;" and the "Independent"—our old friend, the news editor—paid him the straight out from the shoulder compliment, "that he had died as he had lived, an uncompromising game fighter to the end."

What became of Mr. Bat Brydges? Bless you, my friend, do you need to ask? He is shouting for Reform as loudly as his kind always shout when the tide turns. What became of the scandal story? What becomes of any scandal story? What becomes of the skunk's contribution to the gayety of nations?—Buried in the memory of decent folks, long ago and forgotten: in the memory of indecent folk, still hauled forth and repeated and fondled under the tongue.