ok itself free from the pines. It constituted a natural lookout to
the east. Bob drew rein so violently that even his well-trained mountain
horse shook its head in protest.

Before him, hushed with that tremendous calm of vast distances, lay the
Sierras he had never seen, as though embalmed in the sunlight of a
thousand afternoons. A tremendous, deep canon plunged below him, blue
with distance. It climbed again to his level eventually, but by that
time it was ten miles away. And over against him, very remote, were pine
ridges looking velvety and dark and ruffled and full of shadows, like
the erect fur of a beast that has been alarmed. From them here and there
projected granite domes. And beyond them bald ranges; and beyond them,
splintered granite with snow in the crevices; and beyond this the dark
and frowning Pinnacles; and still beyond, other mountains so distant, so
ethereal, so delicately pink and rose and saffron that almost he
expected they might at any moment dissolve into the vivid sky. And,
strangely enough, though he realized the tremendous heights and depths
of these peaks and canons, the whole effect to Bob was as something
spread out broad. The sky, the wonderful over-arching, very blue sky,
was the most important thing in the universe. Compared to its
infinitudes these mountains lay spread like a fair and wrinkled footrug
to a horizon inconceivably remote and mysterious.

Then his eye fell to the ridge opposite, across the blue canon. From one
point on it a straight column of smoke rolled upward, to mushroom out
and hang motionless above the top of the ridge. Its base was shot by
half-seen, half-guessed flaming streaks.

Bob had vaguely expected to see a whole country-side ablaze. This
single, slender column was almost absurd. It looked like a camp-fire,
magnified to fit the setting, of course.

"There's the fire, all right," said Jack. "We got to get across to it
somehow. Trail ends here."

"Why, that doesn't amount to much!" cried Bob.

"Don't it?" said Jack. "Well, I'd call that some shakes of a fire
myself. It's covered mighty nigh three hundred acres by now."

"Three hundred acres! Better say ten."

"You're wrong," said Jack; "I've rode all that country with cattle."

"You'll find it fire enough, when you get there," put in Amy. "It's
right in good timber, too."

"All right," agreed Bob; "I'll believe anything--after this." He waved
his hand abroad. "Jack," he called, as that young man led