crisis in his life--that he was passing through one of
those trials through which a man must pass alone. Had it been possible
the cowboy would have apologized. But that would have been an added
unkindness. Lifting the reins and sitting erect in the saddle, he said
indifferently, "Well, I must be moving. I take a short cut here. So
long! Better make it on down to the goat ranch--it's not far."

He touched his horse with the spur and the animal sprang away.

"Good-bye!" called the stranger, and that wistful look was in his eyes
as the rider swung his horse aside from the road, plunged down the
mountain side, and dashed away through the brush and over the rocks with
reckless speed. With a low exclamation of wondering admiration, the man
climbed hastily to a higher point, and from there watched until horse
and rider, taking a steeper declivity without checking their breakneck
course, dropped from sight in a cloud of dust. The faint sound of the
sliding rocks and gravel dislodged by the flying feet died away; the
cloud of dust dissolved in the thin air. The stranger looked away into
the blue distance in another vain attempt to see the red spots that
marked the Cross-Triangle Ranch.

Slowly the man returned to his seat on the rock. The long shadows of
Granite Mountain crept out from the base of the cliffs farther and
farther over the country below. The blue of the distant hills changed to
mauve with deeper masses of purple in the shadows where the canyons are.
The lonely figure on the summit of the Divide did not move.

The sun hid itself behind the line of mountains, and the blue of the sky
in the west changed slowly to gold against which the peaks and domes and
points were silhouetted as if cut by a graver's tool, and the bold
cliffs and battlements of old Granite grew coldly gray in the gloom. As
the night came on and the details of its structure were lost, the
mountain, to the watching man on the Divide, assumed the appearance of a
mighty fortress--a fortress, he thought, to which a generation of men
might retreat from a civilization that threatened them with destruction;
and once more the man faced back the way he had come.

The far-away cities were already in the blaze of their own artificial
lights--lights valued not for their power to make men see, but for their
power to dazzle, attract and intoxicate--lights that permitted no kindly
dusk at eventide wherein a man might rest from his day's work--a quiet
hour; ligh