the river ran, dwindled to a languid current, the bared mud banks
waiting for their picks. The walls of the canon drew close, a drop of
naked granite opposite, and on the slopes beyond were dark-aisled
depths, golden-moted, and stirred to pensive melodies. The girl
started to help, then kicked aside the up-piled blankets, dropped the
skillets into the mess chest, and cried:

"Oh, I can't, I want to look and listen. Keep still--" The men
stopped their work, and the music of the murmurous boughs and the
gliding water filled the silence. She turned her head, sniffing the
forest's scents, her glance lighting on the blue shoulders of distant
hills.

"And look at the river, yellow, yellow with gold! I can't work now, I
want to see it all--and feel it too," and she ran to the water's edge
where she sat down on a rock and gazed up and down the canon.

When the camp was ready Courant joined her. The rock was wide enough
for two and he sat beside her.

"So you like it, Missy?" he said, sending a side-long glance at her
flushed face.

"Like it!" though there was plenty of room she edged nearer to him,
"I'm wondering if it really is so beautiful or if I just think it so
after the trail."

"You'll be content to stay here with me till we've made our pile?"

She looked at him and nodded, then slipped her fingers between his and
whispered, though there was no one by to hear, "I'd be content to stay
anywhere with you."

He was growing accustomed to this sort of reply. Deprived of it he
would have noticed the omission, but it had of late become so common a
feature in the conversation he felt no necessity to answer in kind. He
glanced at the pine trunks about them and said:

"If the claim's good, we'll cut some of those and build a cabin.
You'll see how comfortable I can make you, the way they do on the
frontier."

She pressed his fingers for answer and he went on:

"When the winter comes we can move farther down. Up here we may get
snow. But there'll be time between now and then to put up something
warm and waterproof."

"Why should we move down? With a good cabin we can be comfortable
here. The snow won't be heavy this far up. They told Daddy John all
about it at the Fort. And you and he can ride in there sometimes when
we want things."

These simple words gratified him more than she guessed. It was as if
she had seen into the secret springs of his thought and said what he
was fearful she would not say.