r of small
stones; then, the right arm had clutched the spindly bole of a creeping
juniper--his body lurched out, hung, swayed, lifted; and the Ranger
disappeared among the shrubbery of the upper trail.

The old man took a deep breath.

"And this is the Man on the Job," he said. He drew behind his shelter
and waited. "The same breed o' men after all, in different harness."

He had not noticed before, but there, ahead, where the black chasm of
the Pass opened portals to the sunny blue of another valley, lay a
lake, the Lake Behind the Peak, spangled with light, marbled like onyx
or malachite, with the sheen of a jewel. Almost at his feet below, the
near end of it lay. He could have tossed a pebble into it,
seven-thousand feet below, where the white foaming river came ramping
through a great pile of moraine that dammed up this end of the Pass to
the width of a bridle trail. The outlaws would have to cross the lake
to escape from the Pass; and almost, he thought, he saw the old punt at
the far end, which Wayland had said hunters sometimes used.

The white butterflies flitted past his hiding place out to the light of
the sun. The eagle was soaring strong-winged, swerving and lifting and
falling in an insolence of languid power. The silent Pass quivered to
the throb of waters. But what was doing with the Ranger? Not a sound
came from the upper trail but the tinkle of hidden springs down the
rocks. He knew if he uttered a shout, the echo would take up his call.
An hour passed: two hours. Ghost shadows came creeping into the
canyon. The butterflies had fluttered out to the blue portal where the
rocks opened doors to the sun. The rampant roar of the river was
quieting to the hollow hush. The old man rose, walked along the
precipice, came back to his shelter, sat, stood up, examined the rifle,
looked ahead where the horses had wandered on, fidgeted, and bemoaned
the years that prevented pursuit up the rock face. He knew by the
light and the hush that it must be almost five o 'clock.

And at five o'clock in the ranch house back in the Valley, Eleanor was
lying in her room with her face buried in Wayland's note, praying as
only the young pray, with the worst and the best of their nature in the
prayer; for where such love comes, all goes into the incense of the
fire that goes up from the altar--the best and the worst of the inmost
heart: an apotheosis of "give-me" and an utter abandonment of
"let-me-give." By