er mind had been at the Silver Hollow, seeing again the forest man's
dark eyes, so grave, so quiet, so deep--her right hand was conscious
as it had never been in all her life before. She heard a strange man's
condemning voice, felt the warmth of his hands pressed upon hers.

The mistress of Last's shook herself, both mentally and physically,
and set herself to resay her prayers.

When she came out to the life and bustle of the ranch house the cattle
were streaming into the far corrals under their dust, the riders were
shouting, young Paula sang in the kitchen, and Anita passed back and
forth about the evening meal.

* * * * *

There was a slim moon in the west above the Canon Country. The skies
were softly alight, high and vaulted, deep and mysterious and sweet.

World-silence, profound as eternity, hung tangibly above Lost Valley
and the Wall, the eastern ramparts of the shelving mountains, the
rocklands at the north. There was little sound in all this sleeping
wilderness.

Bird life was rare. The waters that fell at seasons from the open
mouths of the canyons half way up the Rockface were dried. Down in the
Valley itself there could be seen the lights of Corvan which never
went out from dusk to dawn. Far to the north a black blot might have
been visible with a fuller moon--Courtrey's herds bedded on the range,
the only stock in the Valley so privileged.

Along the foot of the Rockface in the early evening a tiny procession
had crawled, three burros, their pack-saddles empty save for a couple
of sacks tied across each, and a weazened form that followed them--Old
Pete, the snow-packer, bound on his nightly journey to the Canon
Country for the bags of snow for the cooling of the Golden Cloud's
refreshments.

He was a little old man, grotesque and misshapen, yet he followed
briskly after the burros, which were the fastest travelers of their
kind in the land. He rolled on his bandy legs and kept the little
animals on a constant trot with the wisp of stick he carried and the
deep, harsh cries that heralded his coming for a mile ahead and sent
the echoes reverberating between the canyon walls. A little north of
Corvan he had followed the Rockface close for a distance, then
suddenly turned back on his tracks and disappeared, burros and all.
This was the invisible entrance to the Canon Country, a narrow mouth
that opened sidewise into the very breast of the thousand-foot Wall