idge line had been cut. Such duties as men's hands could not do round
ranch houses, she finished in a dream, turning with a touch the house
into a home; flowers for the middle of the big table, dishes
pitchforked down replaced in order, corner cobwebs speared with a
duster on a broom, Navajo rugs uncurled and squared, stale cooking
expelled from littered shelves, flies pursued to the last ditch, breaks
in the mosquito wire round the piazza tacked up, heaps of mended socks
and overalls sent out to the bunk house for the ranch hands, milk cans
buried--it had always been one of the absurdities she was going to
reform, that people used canned milk in a cow country; but,
unfortunately, the obstacle to that reform was that cows could not be
milked on horseback.

After mid-day meal, she ensconced herself in a steamer chair on the
piazza facing the mountain; but her book lay face downward. It was a
book on coniferous trees. She had thought the Valley monotonous when
she had first come back. Now she knew it never remained the same for
two whole hours. The dazzling white of morning had given place to the
yellow glow of afternoon. The River that had flowed quicksilver now
swept seaward pure amber rilled with gold. The fleece clouds herded by
wandering winds had massed to towering cumulus where the sheet
lightnings played; and the Mountain where the silver snow-cross had
glistened in the morning seemed to have changed perspective, to have
retreated and withdrawn to a weird upper world. You no longer saw the
wind-blown cataracts. Purpling shadows, palpable sabling mournful
ghost-forms, folded and wrapped the Ridge with here and there shafts of
slant light, yellow as bars of gold. You could no longer hear the
rampant roar of streams disimprisoned from snow by mid-day sun. With
the slant light came the sibilant hush, the quiet tangible.

She reclined very still in the steamer chair. Life and love and
mystery wrapped her round, the great reverie of the race, the ecstasy
of devotees that sent to death and crusade in the Middle Ages, the
lovelight of life brooding warm and radiant. She no longer saw the
shining pageant of sunlight on the argent fields of an infinite
universe; the sparks and spangles of light in silver cataracts; a world
veiled in gold mist, flame-fired of joy, little cressets of rose edging
every sky-line. She was possessed, obsessed, bathed, enveloped in a
flame of new life. If she thought at all, 'tw