omed outline fretted with the fineness of
horny leaves, its vast boughs outflung in contorted curves. The river
sucked about its roots. Outside its shade the plain grew dryer under
unclouded suns, huge trees casting black blots of shadow in which the
Fort's cattle gathered. Sometimes vaqueros came from the gates in the
adobe walls, riding light and with the long spiral leap of the lasso
rising from an upraised hand. Sometimes groups of half-naked Indians
trailed through the glare, winding a way to the spot of color that was
their camp.

To the girl it was all wonderful, the beauty, the peace, the cessation
of labor. When the men were at the Fort she lay beneath the great tree
watching the faint, white chain of the mountains, or the tawny valley
burning to orange in the long afternoons. For once she was idle, come
at last to the end of all her journeyings. Only the present, the
tranquil, perfect present, existed. What did not touch upon it, fit in
and have some purpose in her life with the man of whom she was a part,
was waste matter. She who had once been unable to endure the thought
of separation from her father could now look back on his death and say,
"How I suffered then," and know no reminiscent pang. She would have
wondered at herself if, in the happiness in which she was lapped, she
could have drawn her mind from its contemplation to wonder at anything.
There was no world beyond the camp, no interest in what did not focus
on Courant, no people except those who added to his trials or his
welfare. The men spent much of their time at the Fort, conferring with
others en route to the river bed below Sutter's mill. When they came
back to the camp there was lively talk under the old tree. The silence
of the trail was at an end. The pendulum swung far, and now they were
garrulous, carried away by the fever of speculation. The evening came
and found them with scattered stores and uncleaned camp, their voices
loud against the low whisperings of leaves and water.

Courant returned from these absences aglow with fortified purpose.
Reestablished contact with the world brightened and humanized him,
acting with an eroding effect on a surface hardened by years of lawless
roving. In his voluntary exile he had not looked for or wanted the
company of his fellows. Now he began to soften under it, shift his
viewpoint from that of the all-sufficing individual to that of the
bonded mass from which he had so long been