you mind asking your Jap to make us some sandwiches and come with
me up to my mountain shanty?" he asked. "I have rather a headache and
want a long ride. Besides, it is high time I went. I should look over
the roads, which they tell me are very bad after the heavy rains. I want
to go into camp there in the early spring--have invited Hofer and one or
two others for salmon-fishing. I have now sent three letters to the
tenant, one Clink, by teamsters, and he has never replied. For all I
know he may have burned the house down and decamped. So, altogether,
this seems to me the time to go, and it would be very jolly to have you
with me."

"I'd like nothing better," said Isabel, delightedly, "after talking eggs
and chickens all morning. And I haven't been up to Mountain House for
years. It used to belong to Uncle Hiram, you know. He always fished
there in the spring, and took me with him. Then Mr. Colton bought it
in--I won't be ten minutes."

"Now I know why you wear that hideous divided habit and ride astride,"
said Gwynne as they started. "I have been half-way up the mountain once
or twice, to say nothing of the Marin hills, and I have never seen such
roads. They are a disgrace to the State. Why on earth doesn't the
legislature take them in hand?"

"Now _I_ know _you_ are in a bad humor," said Isabel, laughing. "You
grumbled at everything when you first came to California, and now that
you have become philosophical like the rest of us, you only anathematize
when you are put out. I saw something was wrong the moment you arrived.
What is it?"

"I'll tell you later. This is our only chance for a sharp trot."

It was quite two miles to the ascending road at the foot of the mountain
range that divided the great valley. It rose gently for a time then
suddenly became steep. Lumpy and slanting, already dangerously narrow in
many places, for there had been a few days of hard rain, it led along
the edge of cannons and chasms, creeks and little valleys as round as
a bowl. Here and there was a farmhouse or a country home on a slope, set
in the midst of fields just turning green. The first stretch of
road--cut roughly in the mountain-side and then left to take care of
itself--was on county property, but after an hour's climb along the
flank of the mountain they reached the part of the great mass included
in Lumalitas, where the road, although still public, had been mended now
and again by tenants that had used the camp in the fishi