her moon, radiantly silver in its setting of
cloudlike leafage. She drew a long breath as her brother started on, and
called to him.

"Clarence!" He pulled up his horse, looking back at her.

"You'll think me absurd, but I've decided not to go with you, after all.
I believe I'd rather stay with Virginia. She'll be lonesome."

He came back to her, scolding whimsically.

"I know I'm foolish," she persisted, "but you're so dreadfully busy and
noisy over there."

"Nonsense! And Virgie will be all right. She doesn't need you for a few
days."

"I'm sure she'll need me. No--go on alone, there's a dear. I can ride
over myself and bring you back for a few days, after your rush is over."

"Well, if you're really set." He submitted, grumbling.

"And kiss me, dear!"

He did so, still grumbling. "And you skip back, if you're going back.
You're cold as ice. So long, weathervane! And come over when you feel
like it."

"I'll be warm, dear--and good-by."

She watched him down the slope and across the meadow until he vanished
into the black of the forest wall. Then she rode on to the camp. Without
dismounting she took from the end of a broken branch a revolver in its
holster that she had hung there earlier in the day. She made sure again
that it was loaded and buckled the holster about her waist.

Turning from the ranch trail, then, she found another that led off to
the north and away from the Pagosa road--off into a wooded wilderness of
hills where she would be safe from discovery. She halted again on the
first ridge above the camp, sitting motionless in the shadow, her eyes
on the little moon-flooded opening across the lake where the cabin trail
came down to the shore. That was a walk for lovers, but they could not
walk there now. After a little time she whirled Cooney about in a sudden
gust of fierceness and sent him along the winding ridge, keeping close
within the shadow.

When the trail fell away into the first of the unknown valleys she
breathed a sigh of relief and release. Her burden was falling from her.
She could not again be cheated back from her refuge.

She began to rejoice in the wide, wild sweetness of the night, its piny
fragrance, the soft-footed scurryings of its lesser people, the gloom of
its sharply defined shadows, and the silvering haze that enveloped the
peaks. She came on a deer feeding in the open, and was delighted when it
did not run. It only lifted its head to look at her.

She began to re