med where the mountains blackened against it. Gold halos
tipped the clouds, that melted presently into fiery waves, then burst into
one great aureole through which the sun rode triumphant, and it was day.

She had kept post-office the day before, and it would not be till day
after to-morrow that the squires of the lariat would come again to offer
their hearts, their worldly goods, their complete reformation, if she
would only change her mind. It was all such an old story that she had
grown to regard them with a tenderness almost maternal. But to-day was all
her own, and the spirit of adventure swelled high in her bosom as she
thought of what she had planned. It was warm and close and still in the
Dax house as Judith made her way softly to her own room and began her
preparations for the long journey she was to take afoot. To walk in the
abominations devised by the white man for the purpose of cramping his feet
would have been a serious handicap to Judith. The twenty miles that she
would walk before nightfall was no very great undertaking to her, but it
was part of her primitive directness to accomplish it with as little
expenditure of fatigue and comfort as possible. Moreover, who could steal
through the forest in those heeled things without announcing his coming
and frightening the forest folk, and sending them skurrying? And Judith
loved to surprise them and see them busy with their affairs--to creep along
in her soft, elk-hide moccasins and catch their watchful eyes and see the
things that were not for the heavy-booted white man.

She might have inspired Kitty Colebrooke to a sonnet as she stepped out
into the glad morning light, in short skirt and jacket, green-clad as the
pines that girdled the mountains, with a knapsack with rations of bread
and meat and the wherewithal to build a fire should she wander belated.
She softly closed the door, not to awaken Leander and his slumbering lady,
and broke into the running gait that the Indians use on their all-day
journeys, the elk-hide moccasins falling soft as snow-flakes on the trail.
Dolly she missed chiefly for her companionship, for Judith had not the
white man's utter helplessness without a horse in this country of high
altitudes. When she walked she breathed, carried herself, covered ground
like her mother's people, and loved the inspiration of it.

The eerie shadows of the desert drew back and hid themselves in the
mountains. The day began with splendid promise--the