he illusion he had been dreamily and nobly
constructing. "Oh, I've been kissed before!" The shock to him now
exceeded his first dismay. Half bitterly she had spoken, and wholly
scornful of herself, or of him, or of all men. For she had said all
men were alike. Jean chafed under the smart of that, a taunt every
decent man hated. Naturally every happy and healthy young man would
want to kiss such red, sweet lips. But if those lips had been for
others--never for him! Jean reflected that not since childish games
had he kissed a girl--until this brown-faced Ellen Jorth came his way.
He wondered at it. Moreover, he wondered at the significance he placed
upon it. After all, was it not merely an accident? Why should he
remember? Why should he ponder? What was the faint, deep, growing
thrill that accompanied some of his thoughts?

Riding along with busy mind, Jean almost crossed a well-beaten trail,
leading through a pine thicket and down over the Rim. Jean's pack mule
led the way without being driven. And when Jean reached the edge of
the bluff one look down was enough to fetch him off his horse. That
trail was steep, narrow, clogged with stones, and as full of sharp
corners as a crosscut saw. Once on the descent with a packed mule and
a spirited horse, Jean had no time for mind wanderings and very little
for occasional glimpses out over the cedar tops to the vast blue hollow
asleep under a westering sun.

The stones rattled, the dust rose, the cedar twigs snapped, the little
avalanches of red earth slid down, the iron-shod hoofs rang on the
rocks. This slope had been narrow at the apex in the Rim where the
trail led down a crack, and it widened in fan shape as Jean descended.
He zigzagged down a thousand feet before the slope benched into
dividing ridges. Here the cedars and junipers failed and pines once
more hid the sun. Deep ravines were black with brush. From somewhere
rose a roar of running water, most pleasant to Jean's ears. Fresh deer
and bear tracks covered old ones made in the trail.

Those timbered ridges were but billows of that tremendous slope that
now sheered above Jean, ending in a magnificent yellow wall of rock,
greened in niches, stained by weather rust, carved and cracked and
caverned. As Jean descended farther the hum of bees made melody, the
roar of rapid water and the murmur of a rising breeze filled him with
the content of the wild. Sheepmen like Colter and wild girls like
Ellen