few miles across the ridges, down in Bear Canyon,
never materialized at all for Ellen. This circumstance so interested
her that she went up to see her friend Sprague and got him to direct
her to Bear Canyon, so that she would be sure not to miss it. And she
rode from the narrow, maple-thicketed head of it near the Rim down all
its length. She found no ranch, no cabin, not even a corral in Bear
Canyon. Sprague said there was only one canyon by that name. Daggs
had assured her of the exact location on his place, and so had her
father. Had they lied? Were they mistaken in the canyon? There were
many canyons, all heading up near the Rim, all running and widening
down for miles through the wooded mountain, and vastly different from
the deep, short, yellow-walled gorges that cut into the Rim from the
Basin side. Ellen investigated the canyons within six or eight miles of
her home, both to east and to west. All she discovered was a couple of
old log cabins, long deserted. Still, she did not follow out all the
trails to their ends. Several of them led far into the deepest,
roughest, wildest brakes of gorge and thicket that she had seen. No
cattle or sheep had ever been driven over these trails.

This riding around of Ellen's at length got to her father's ears. Ellen
expected that a bitter quarrel would ensue, for she certainly would
refuse to be confined to the camp; but her father only asked her to
limit her riding to the meadow valley, and straightway forgot all about
it. In fact, his abstraction one moment, his intense nervousness the
next, his harder drinking and fiercer harangues with the men, grew to
be distressing for Ellen. They presaged his further deterioration and
the ever-present evil of the growing feud.

One day Jorth rode home in the early morning, after an absence of two
nights. Ellen heard the clip-clop of, horses long before she saw them.

"Hey, Ellen! Come out heah," called her father.

Ellen left her work and went outside. A stranger had ridden in with
her father, a young giant whose sharp-featured face appeared marked by
ferret-like eyes and a fine, light, fuzzy beard. He was long, loose
jointed, not heavy of build, and he had the largest hands and feet
Ellen bad ever seen. Next Ellen espied a black horse they had
evidently brought with them. Her father was holding a rope halter. At
once the black horse struck Ellen as being a beauty and a thoroughbred.

"Ellen, heah's a horse for y