of a harp string.

"Look," she said, poking at the sod with her foot. "All the little
clover leaves have folded their wings to sleep."

Old Calamity passed in and out of the Range cabin. Wayland couldn't
remember how from the first they had slipped into the habit of calling
each other by Christian names. It was the old half-breed woman, who
had first told him that the Canadian, Donald MacDonald, the rich sheep
man, had a daughter travelling in Europe. One day when he had been
signing grazing permits in the MacDonald ranch house, he had caught a
glimpse of a piano, that had been packed up the mountains on mules,
standing in an inner sitting room; and the walls were decorated with
long-necked swan-necked Gibson girls and Watts' photogravures and
Turner color prints and naked Sorolla boys bathing in Spanish seas.
That was the beginning. She had come in suddenly, introduced herself
and shaken hands.

And now Wayland felt a dazed wonder how in the world they two in the
course of half an hour--the first half hour they had ever been alone in
their lives--had come to deciding "straddle or fight"; but that was the
unusual thing about her. She got under surfaces; but, until to-night
on the Holy Cross Mountain, he had been able to laugh at his own new
sensations, to laugh even at an occasional sense of his tongue turning
to dough in the roof of his mouth.

"Look, what is that behind your shoulder, Dick?"

"Oh, that," said the Forest Ranger, "that is a well known, game old
elderly spinster lady commonly called the Moon; and that other on the
branch chittering swear words is nothing in the world but a Douglas
squirrel hunting--I think he is really hunting--a flea to mix in his
spruce tips as salad."

"Do you know what he is saying?"

"Of course! Cheer up! Cheer up! Chirrup! He's our Master
Forester--caches the best seed cones for us to steal."

But when he turned back, she had freed her hands, and slipped to the
other side of the slab seat; and Wayland--inconsistent fellow--went all
abash when they had both got hold of themselves and were once more back
to life with feet on solid earth.

"And is it straddle or--fight?"

She had put on her panama sunshade and was looking straight and
steadily in his eyes. The Ranger met the look, the eager look slowly
and deliberately giving place to determined masterdom.

"If that is a challenge, I'll take it!" Then he added; and his face
went hot as her own: "As to the