p a gulch back of the Three Bar, the ranger in the
lead with his pack horse. The other pack animals followed and the
three other men and the girl brought up the rear in single file. By
noon they made the first rims and followed over into a rolling country,
heavily timbered in the main. In the early evening they rode out on to
a low divide and Blind Valley showed below them, a broad expanse of
open grassland. A little stream threaded the bottoms and its winding
course was marked by thickets of birch. In places it disappeared under
the leafy tunnels of aspen groves, their pale silvery trunks and leaves
contrasting with the heavy blue-green of an occasional water-spruce.
In a narrowing of the valley it was choked from wall to wall by a
cottonwood jungle, opening out once more into wide meadows immediately
below the neck. Long open parks extended their tongues well back up
the timbered sidehills.

"Feed!" Harris said. "Feed. Worlds of it."

They angled down the slope and struck the rank grass of the
bottoms,--mountain hay in which the horses stood knee-deep. They made
camp at the mouth of a branching canyon, just within the timber. The
ranger threw the horses up this side gulch while Harris felled a dead
pine and kindled a fire. When the ranger returned he picketed one
horse in the heavy grass while Slade pitched Billie's teepee under a
spruce. The meal was finished, dishes washed and the five sat round a
fire.

Harris sensed Deane's attitude toward it all for he knew something of
the other man's way of life. Those with whom Deane was thrown most in
contact were careful of appearances. It was unheard-of in his code
that a girl should jaunt for days accompanied by four men. Here
appearances seemed entirely disregarded and no one gave the matter a
thought.

The moon swung over the ridges and shed its radiance over Blind Valley.
Deane motioned to Billie and the girl rose and followed him to the edge
of the timber where they sat on a blow-down.

"Billie, let me take you away from all this," he urged. "All this hard
riding and rough man's work. Let me give you the things that will shut
out all the hardships. What's the use of going on like this?"

The girl was conscious of a vague sense of disappointment. Deane was
an active figure in the business life of his own community and she had
felt some pride in the fact that when he should come to the Three Bar
he would find that she too was doing real work in