ake the wagon on the
long grade down the canyon, loaded the wagon with posts, bound them
fast with a lighter chain he had brought for the purpose, ate his own
lunch and decided that, since he had made fair time and would arrive
home too early to do the chores and too late to start any other job, he
would cruise farther up the mountain side and see what was the prospect
of getting out logs enough for an addition to the cabin.

Now that Raine was going to live with him, two rooms were not enough.
Brit wanted to make her as happy as he could, in his limited fashion.
He had for some days been planning a "settin' room and bedroom" for
her. She would be having beaux after awhile when she got acquainted,
he supposed. He could not deny her the privilege; she was young and
she was, in Brit's opinion, the best looking girl he had ever seen, not
even excepting Minnie, her mother. But he hoped she wouldn't go off
and get married the first thing she did,--and one good way to prevent
that, he reasoned, was to make her comfortable with him. He had
noticed how pleased she was that their cabin was of logs. She had even
remarked that she could not understand how a rancher would ever want to
build a board shack if there was any timber to be had. Well, timber
was to be had, and she should have her log house, though the hauling
was not going to be any sunshine, in Brit's opinion. With his axe he
walked through the timber, craning upward for straight tree trunks and
lightly blazing the ones he would want, the occasional axe strokes
sounding distinctly in the quiet air.

Lorraine heard them as she rode old Yellowjacket puffing up the grade,
following the wagon marks, and knew that she was nearing the end of her
journey,--for which Yellowjacket, she supposed, would be thankful. She
had started not more than an hour later than her father, but the team
had trotted along more briskly than her poor old nag would travel, so
that she did not overtake her dad as she had hoped.

She was topping the last climb when she saw the team tied to the trees,
and at the same moment she caught a glimpse of a man who crawled out
from under the load of posts and climbed the slope farther on. She was
on the point of calling out to him, thinking that he was her dad, when
he disappeared into the brush. At the same moment she heard the stroke
of an axe over to the right of where the man was climbing.

She was riding past the team when Caroline humped her