arrowed the limits of his
vision, he saw where the dividing line ran. He remembered suddenly
that even in her destructions Nature had still controlled. The floods
of the heavens must have been abruptly poured out at some time during
the night, or the fire would still be raging on, searching out fresh
fuel beyond those hills, traveling on on and on through the limitless
forests which lay to the north, and south, and west.

The memory gave him fresh hope. It told him that the world was still
outside waiting to welcome them to its hostels. And so he turned at
last to the patient woman at his side.

"It seems so a'mighty queer, little Joan," he said gently. "It
seems so a'mighty queer I can't rightly get the hang of things.
Yesterday--yesterday--why, yesterday all this," he waved an arm to
indicate the broken world about him, "was as God made it, an' now
ther's jest ruin--blank ruin that'll take all your life, and mine, an'
dozens who're comin' after us to--to build up agin. Yesterday this
camp was full of busy folk chasin' a livin' from the products Nature
had set here. Now she's wiped 'em out. Why? Yesterday a good man was
threatened by man's law, an' it looked as if that law was to suck us
all into its web an' make criminals of us. Now he's gone an' the
law'll be chased back to hunt around for its prey in places with less
danger to 'em. It's all queer--mighty queer. An' it's queerer still to
think of you an' me sittin' here puzzlin' out these things."

"Yes."

Joan nodded without removing her eyes from the face she loved so well.
Then after a pause she went on--

"You think--he's dead?"

Buck was some time before he answered her. His grave eyes were fixed
on a spot across the water, where a break in the charred remains of
the forest revealed a sky-line of green grass.

"How else?" he said, at last. "He was behind me with your aunt. He was
on the hill. You've scoured what remains of the plateau. Wal, he ain't
there, an' he didn't come down the path wher' we come. We ain't see
'em anyways. Yep," he went on, with a sigh, "guess the Padre's dead,
an' one o' them rocks down ther' is markin' his grave. Seems queer. He
went with her. She was the woman he had loved. They've gone together,
even though she just--hated him. He was a good man an'--he'd got grit.
He was the best man in the world an'--an' my big friend."

His voice was husky with emotion, and something like a sob came with
his last word, and Joan's eyes fill