y broke off sprays of
resinous needles as they rode, inhaling the sharp odours; they stooped
for handfuls of fragrant sage; they splashed through swampy places where
the grass and stalks of lush flowers swept their stirrups, through
rock-bound noisy streams where they must pick their way cautiously, and
where the horses snorted and shook their heads and Gloria laughed
gleefully. To-day was like the completion of that other day when they
had ridden to Coloma--to both it seemed that it was only yesterday. The
weeks in between did not matter; they were wiped out of life by the
green magic. Unfinished topics, left over from the first ride, presented
themselves now to be completed. Once Gloria, speaking of their first
woodland luncheon, said "Yesterday." Once King, as they crossed a wild
mountain brook, said, "There's one's nest now. On that rock down by the
waterfall. Looks like a bit of the rock itself, with moss all about it,"
and Gloria understood that it was her water-ouzel he was talking about.

"It was springtime yesterday and to-day it's summer!" said Gloria.

"It's always springtime somewhere in the world," answered King. "To-day
we'll ride from one season up into the other."

"More magic!" laughed Gloria.

It is always springtime somewhere in the world! As youth knows and
remembers, as age forgets. Always a place somewhere for laughter and
love and light hands caressing, for bird song and bird mating and
colourful flowers. And to-day they were seeking this place among the
mountains, riding on expectantly through dark passes, climbing winding
trails, looking across deep canons and blue ridges. Gloria thought
dreamily that she would like always to be riding thus, leaving summer
behind and below, questing the joyous, full-sapped springtime.

He had promised to show her his latest temporary camp. They came to it
before noon at an altitude of well above seven thousand feet. In a
grassy open space they left their horses; King carried their lunch
bundle and they went on on foot. Along the frothing creek, along the
mountain-side through a wild country of dwarfed vegetation. She began to
understand a thing he had told her; that the Sierra is the land of dwarf
and giant. Pine and cedar and, in one spot he knew, mighty sequoia
piercing at the sky; and here pine, dwarfed, pygmied until it was but a
mat of twisted, broken twigs carpeting the heights. "And I have walked
among the pine tops!" cried Gloria. For up here there w