hed for trout and cooked their supper on
the grassy levels. It was in Judith's planning to arrive before the
hunting-party, to hide among the thickets of scrub pine that grew along
the steep cliffs and overlooked the grassy level, to take her fill of
looking at the pale-haired girl and the hunters at their merrymaking, and,
when she had seen, to steal back across the trail to the Daxes'. They
would not penetrate the thickets where she meant to hide, and, should
they, she was prepared for that contingency, too. She had brought with her
a bright-colored shawl that she would throw over her head, and with the
start of them she could outrun them all, even Peter. Had she not
outdistanced him easily, many times, in fun? Through the tangle of
tree-trunks that grew not far from the thicket, they would think she was
but a poor Shoshone squaw lying in wait for the broken meat of the
revellers.

By crossing and recrossing the tiny creeks that trickled slow and
obstructed through the gaunt levels of plain and foot-hill, she had come
by a direct route to the fringes of the pine country. And here she found a
world dim, green, and mysterious. It was wellnigh inconceivable that the
land of sage-brush and silence could, within walking distance of
desolation, show such wealth of young timber, such shade and beauty. Her
noiseless footfalls scarce startled a sage-hen that, realizing too late
her presence, froze to the dead stump--a ruffled gray excrescence with
glittering bead eyes that stared at her furtively, the one live thing in
the tense body.

The sun wanted an hour of noon when Judith rested by the stream, bathed
her face and hands, flushed from the long walk, ate the bread and meat,
then lay on the bed of pine-needles, brown and soft from the weathering of
many suns and snows. She had been all day in the company she loved
best--the earth, the sky, the sun and wind--and in her heart at last was a
deep tranquillity. Thus she could face life and ask nothing but to watch
the cloud fleeces as they are spun and heaped high in the long days of
summer; in soberer moods to watch the thoughts of the Great Mystery as He
reveals them in the shifting cloud shapes; to penetrate further and
further into the councils of the great forces. Thus did she dream the
moments away till the sun was high in the blue and threw long, yellow
splashes of light on her still body, on the soft pine-needles, beneath the
boughs. But there was no time for further day