at the telephone in the pergola, where British respect for law was at
one end of the wire and the handy man of the Valley at the other?

There was no bitterness in the quizzical smile with which he awaited
the old man's return; for as he lay back on the ground watching the
fire burn up, the letter brought again, not memory, but consciousness
of that seal to service, he wondered half vaguely could she know, could
she realize, did a woman _ever_ realize what her love meant to a man.
She could surely never have given such full draughts of life, of
wondrous new revealing consciousness, unless they were drinking
together from the same perennial, ever-new, ever-surprising
spring! . . . He did not hear the footsteps till the old man spoke--

"A somehow--didna' seem--to get--them clear! They answered; then--they
didna' answer! _Smelter City Herald_--ye said? 'Twas strange--'twas
vera strange--A got an answer plain asking my name--then central said
'ring off! ring off! can't get them, wire out of order'!"

This time, Wayland did not laugh. Had not the wires been out of order
since first he began to ring the bells of his little insignificant
place to a Nation's alarm?

They ate their bannocks--'Rocky Mountain dead shot' Westerners call the
slap-jacks--in silence. While the old man still pondered mazed and
dumb, the Ranger dabbled the cups and plates in the River and recinched
the pack saddle, the little mule blowing out his sides and groaning to
ease the girth, the bronchos wisely eating to the process of
reharnessing. The Britisher's reverence for law dies hard. Wayland
saw the wrestle and kept silent. A deep low boom rolled dully through
the earth in smothered rumblings and tremblings like distant thunder.

"What's that, Wayland?"

"Only the snow slides loosened by the noon-thaw slithering down the
Pass of Holy Cross;" and somehow, he could not but think of what she
had said . . . the law of the snow flake sculpturing the rocks.

The horses cropped audibly over the grasses--waiting. The little mule
looked back--also waiting. A whelming impulse, part of the spirit to
drink of her inspiration, part of the flesh to drink of her touch--came
over him to ride down to the ranch house, the MacDonald ranch house, to
see her--just once before setting out on the Long Trail.

"Well," he said; "which way, Mr. Matthews?"

The old Britisher moved thoughtfully towards his broncho.

"We'll try y'r sheriff--at least, we'l