ap was too long for her, for she landed
in the shallows with splashing ankles, she had scarcely a down glance
for them. Her worried eyes were searching the green uplands before
them.

Secretly she was troubled at Johnny's instant choice of way. Her own
instinct was to go back along the river and then strike in towards old
Baldy, but men, she knew from Papa, did not like objections to their
wisdom, so she reminded herself that she was a stranger and ignorant of
this country and that Johnny Byrd knew his mountains.

He told her, as they went along, how well he knew them.

Steadily their path climbed.

"Should we not wind back a little?" she ventured once.

"Oh, we're on another path--we'll dip back and meet the other path a
little higher up," the young man told her.

But still the path did not dip back. It reached straight up. But Johnny
would not abandon it. He seemed to feel it inextricably united with his
own rightness of decision, and since he was inevitably right, so
inevitably the path must disclose its desired character.

But once or twice he paused and looked out over the way. Then,
hopefully, Ri-Ri hung upon his expression, longing for reconsideration.
But he never faltered, always on her approach he charged ahead again.

No holding back of brambles, now. No helping over logs. Johnny was the
pathfinder, oblivious, intent, and Ri-Ri, the pioneer woman, enduring as
best she might.

Up he drove, straight up the mountain side, and after him scrambled the
girl, her fears voiceless in her throat, her heart pounding with
exertion and anxiety like a ship's engine in her side.

Time seemed interminable. There was no sun now. The gray and white
clouds were spread thinly over the sky and only a diffused brightness
gave the suggestion of the west.

When the path wound through woods it seemed already night. On barren
slopes the day was clear again.

Hours passed. Endless hours to the tired-footed girl. They had left the
last woods behind them now and reached a clearing of bracken among the
granite, and here Johnny Byrd stopped, and stared out with an
unconcealed bewilderment that turned her hopes to lead.

With him, she stared out at the great gray peaks closing in about them
without recognizing a friend among them. Dim and unfamiliar they loomed,
shrouded in clouds, like chilly giants in gray mufflers against the
damp.

It was not old Baldy. It could not be old Baldy. One looked up at old
Baldy from the Lod