ut the deep flame of the wild flower. Some
day, perhaps,--no matter; he set his teeth and screwed the whipcord
muscles taut; for the moraine stones had begun to roll, and there was a
zig-zag flash of lightning that sent fire balls sizzling over the rock.
He braced her to the leap down the steep sliding moraine, and felt the
frenzy of joy from her touch.

"There! We took the jump together! You didn't push me over the edge
of things," he said, as their feet touched the pine needle slope.

This time, the lightning came with a ripping splintering rocking echo.

"It's like Love and Life racing in the picture," she laughed back and
they bounded into the buckboard, Wayland standing braced behind the
seat, "to stop her kiting down the hill if we break loose," he said;
she, forward with the driver, feet braced to the iron foot-rest, hands
holding the seat-guard. Then, the brim of his felt hat flapping, the
bronchos' ears laid back, necks craned out, the old man whirling the
whip, they were off for the Rim Rocks. The breaking storm, the
whipping winds, the wild pace, the rush of the fringed rain, seemed a
part of the furious exaltation breaking the bounds of her own
consciousness.

"Cross the ford, Sir," shouted the Ranger bending forward, "it's
shorter than the bridge;" and her hair tossed in his face as the
buckboard splashed into the River and bounced up the far side with hind
wheels swaying.

"Are y' all right, there?" called the old driver over his shoulder.

"Stay with it," yelled Wayland, "straight ahead where the road cuts the
Rim Rocks."

"We're splitting the air all right," shouted the old man. "Ye mind y'
talked of sawing air. Split it, man, an' y'll get somewhere."

Up a hummock, down a ravine, over a fallen log with a hurdle jump that
threatened to break the buckboard's back.

"Are ye there yet?" called the old man.

"Split the wind, Sir," shouted Wayland; and the rig went rattling up
the red earth road of the Rim Rocks not a wheel's width from the edge.

"We're leaving the storm behind; look back," she said.

Up the Valley swept the rains in a wall of whipped spray jagged by the
zig-zag streaks of lightning.

"Hold on till we turn the next switch back," warned the Ranger. The
buckboard wheeled a point as he spoke and the bronchos floundered to a
fagged trot. They saw it coming: the rain wall, frayed at the edge to
a fringe, the wind lashing their faces, the red rocks of the
battlements jutti