In a moment the
pine trees up on the edge of the rim were flashing with coppery
fire. The thin red clouds which hung above their pointed tops began to
boil and move rapidly, weaving in and out like smoke. The swallows
darted out of their rock houses as at a signal, and flew upward, toward
the rim. Little brown birds began to chirp in the bushes along the
watercourse down at the bottom of the ravine, where everything was still
dusky and pale. At first the golden light seemed to hang like a wave
upon the rim of the canyon; the trees and bushes up there, which one
scarcely noticed at noon, stood out magnified by the slanting rays.
Long, thin streaks of light began to reach quiveringly down into the
canyon. The red sun rose rapidly above the tops of the blazing pines,
and its glow burst into the gulf, about the very doorstep on which Thea
sat. It bored into the wet, dark underbrush. The dripping cherry bushes,
the pale aspens, and the frosty PINONS were glittering and trembling,
swimming in the liquid gold. All the pale, dusty little herbs of the
bean family, never seen by any one but a botanist, became for a moment
individual and important, their silky leaves quite beautiful with dew
and light. The arch of sky overhead, heavy as lead a little while
before, lifted, became more and more transparent, and one could look up
into depths of pearly blue.

The savor of coffee and bacon mingled with the smell of wet cedars
drying, and Fred called to Thea that he was ready for her. They sat down
in the doorway of his kitchen, with the warmth of the live coals behind
them and the sunlight on their faces, and began their breakfast, Mrs.
Biltmer's thick coffee cups and the cream bottle between them, the
coffee-pot and frying-pan conveniently keeping hot among the embers.

"I thought you were going back on the whole proposition, Thea, when you
were crawling along with that lantern. I couldn't get a word out of
you."

"I know. I was cold and hungry, and I didn't believe there was going to
be any morning, anyway. Didn't you feel queer, at all?"

Fred squinted above his smoking cup. "Well, I am never strong for
getting up before the sun. The world looks unfurnished. When I first lit
the fire and had a square look at you, I thought I'd got the wrong girl.
Pale, grim--you were a sight!"

Thea leaned back into the shadow of the rock room and warmed her hands
over the coals. "It was dismal enough. How warm these walls are, all the
way rou