wondering if anything could be the matter, if,
perhaps, something had happened at the barn-warming the evening before to
displease Vivian. She had seemed so unlike herself all the morning.

But, she concluded wisely, few days were cloudless, and even an almost
perfect house-party had its ups and downs. She and Donald had both
discovered that. So many different personalities were bound to collide
occasionally, and one couldn't be happy always. An afternoon on the
mountain was sure to make Vivian's world bright again.

Meanwhile Vivian neared the crossroads. Carver was not there. A scanning
of the prairie showed him nowhere in sight. She would ride up the canyon
to the ford and wait there, she said to herself. When she rode, her
thoughts were less troublesome, and it was far easier to stick to her
resolve.

Last evening, just as Mr. Benjamin Jarvis' guests were dispersing, she had
made a hasty engagement with Carver to meet her the following afternoon
and go for kinnikinnick up Cinnamon Creek. The search for kinnikinnick was
not, however, her real reason for wishing to see Carver. If her courage
did not fail her, and if her sudden resolve did not wane in the light of
day, as resolves so often do, she was going to ask Carver to ride with her
up Cinnamon Creek to the ranger's cabin, and there help her to apologize
for their rudeness. To admit her regret to Carver would be even more
difficult than to apologize to the ranger, and she was not at all sure
that she should wish to do so in severely practical daylight.

Yet daylight had come--it was early afternoon of the next day--and she was
still ready if Carver would only come. She allowed Siwash to sink his warm
nose in the amber waters of the ford while she waited. It was very still
up there. In fact, only Virginia's repeated assurances that there were no
cattle on the hills and her own knowledge that a homesteader's cabin was
just out of sight beyond the quaking-asps on her left, made Vivian endure
that stillness, broken only by the hurrying creek waters and the lazy
humming of tiny, hidden insects.

To her right rose the mountain wall, dark with pine and spruce, though
here and there a flaming service-berry or a hawthorn broke through the
evergreens like sudden fire. The tangle of trees and shrubs seemed
impenetrable, and yet Virginia had told of a trail which led from the
creek not three rods from the ford--led up, up, up for five miles until it
reached the Cinnamon