p descent on the other side of the ridge, he
stopped. His tired form straightened. His face lighted with a look of
wondering awe, and an involuntary exclamation came from his lips as his
unaccustomed eyes swept the wide view that lay from his feet unrolled
before him.

Under that sky, so unmatched in its clearness and depth of color, the
land lay in all its variety of valley and forest and mesa and
mountain--a scene unrivaled in the magnificence and grandeur of its
beauty. Miles upon miles in the distance, across those primeval reaches,
the faint blue peaks and domes and ridges of the mountains ranked--an
uncounted sentinel host. The darker masses of the timbered hillsides,
with the varying shades of pine and cedar, the lighter tints of oak
brush and chaparral, the dun tones of the open grass lands, and the
brighter note of the valley meadows' green were defined, blended and
harmonized by the overlying haze with a delicacy exquisite beyond all
human power to picture. And in the nearer distances, chief of that army
of mountain peaks, and master of the many miles that lie within their
circle, Granite Mountain, gray and grim, reared its mighty bulk of cliff
and crag as if in supreme defiance of the changing years or the hand of
humankind.

In the heart of that beautiful land upon which, from the summit of the
Divide, the stranger looked with such rapt appreciation, lies Williamson
Valley, a natural meadow of lush, dark green, native grass. And, had the
man's eyes been trained to such distances, he might have distinguished
in the blue haze the red roofs of the buildings of the Cross-Triangle
Ranch.

For some time the man stood there, a lonely figure against the sky,
peculiarly out of place in his careful garb of the cities. The schooled
indifference of his face was broken. His self-depreciation and mockery
were forgotten. His dark eyes glowed with the fire of excited
anticipation--with hope and determined purpose. Then, with a quick
movement, as though some ghost of the past had touched him on the
shoulder, he looked back on the way he had come. And the light in his
eyes went out in the gloom of painful memories. His countenance,
unguarded because of his day of loneliness, grew dark with sadness and
shame. It was as though he looked beyond the town he had left that
morning, with its litter and refuse of yesterday's pleasure, to a life
and a world of tawdry shams, wherein men give themselves to win by means
fair or foul