widened, grew more open, more genial. Aspen thickets
of pale-gold flashed upon their eyes like sunlight, and grassy bunches
afforded firmer footing, but on the slopes their feet slipped and slid
painfully. Still Berea kept her stride. "We must get to the middle fork
before dark," she stopped to explain, "for I don't know the trail down
there, and there's a lot of down timber just above the station. Now that
we're cut loose from our camp I feel nervous. As long as I have a tent I
am all right; but now we are in the open I worry. How are you standing
it?" She studied him with keen and anxious glance, her hand upon his
arm.

"Fine as a fiddle," he replied, assuming a spirit he did not possess,
"but you are marvelous. I thought cowgirls couldn't walk?"

"I can do anything when I have to," she replied. "We've got three hours
more of it." And she warningly exclaimed: "Look back there!"

They had reached a point from which the range could be seen, and behold
it was covered deep with a seamless robe of new snow.

"That's why dad didn't get back last night. He's probably wallowing along
up there this minute." And she set off again with resolute stride.
Wayland's pale face and labored breath alarmed her. She was filled with
love and pity, but she pressed forward desperately.

As he grew tired, Wayland's boots, loaded with mud, became fetters, and
every slope greasy with mire seemed an almost insurmountable barricade.
He fell several times, but made no outcry. "I will not add to her
anxiety," he said to himself.

At last they came to the valley floor, over which a devastating fire had
run some years before, and which was still covered with fallen trees in
desolate confusion. Here the girl made her first mistake. She kept on
toward the river, although Wayland called attention to a trail leading to
the right up over the low grassy hills. For a mile the path was clear,
but she soon found herself confronted by an endless maze of blackened
tree-trunks, and at last the path ended abruptly.

Dismayed and halting, she said: "We've got to go back to that trail which
branched off to the right. I reckon that was the highland trail which
Settle made to keep out of the swamp. I thought it was a trail from
Cameron Peak, but it wasn't. Back we go."

She was suffering keenly now, not on her own account, but on his, for she
could see that he was very tired, and to climb up that hill again was
like punishing him a second time.

When she p