lways known of these
things. And Lorry, gravely attentive, listened without interrupting her
until she asked why he was so silent.

"Because I'm right happy, miss, to see you lookin' so spry and pretty.
I'm thinkin' Arizona has been kind of a heaven for you."

"And you?" she queried, laughing.

"Well, it wasn't the heat that would make me call it what it was up here
last winter. I rode up once while you was gone. Gray Leg could just make
it to the cabin. It wasn't so bad in the timber. But comin' across the
mesa the cinchas sure scraped snow."

"Right here on our mesa?"

"Right here, miss. From the edge of the timber over there to this side
it was four feet deep on the level."

"And now," she said, gesturing toward the wavering grasses. "But why did
you risk it?"

Lorry laughed. He had not considered it a risk. "You remember that book
you lent me. Well, I left it in my cabin. There was one piece that kep'
botherin' me. I couldn't recollect the last part about those 'Little
Fires.' I was plumb worried tryin' to remember them verses. When I got
it, I sure learned that piece from the jump to the finish."

"The 'Little Fires'? I'm glad you like it. I do.

"'From East to West they're burning in tower and forge
and home,
And on beyond the outlands, across the ocean foam;
On mountain crest and mesa, on land and sea and height,
The little fires along the trail that twinkle down the night.'

"And about the sheep-herder; do you remember how--

"'The Andalusian herder rolls a smoke and points the way,
As he murmurs, "Caliente," "San Clemente," "Santa Fe,"
Till the very names are music, waking memoried desires,
And we turn and foot it down the trail to find the little fires.
Adventuring! Adventuring! And, oh, the sights to see!
And little fires along the trail that wink at you and me.'"

"That's it! But I couldn't say it like that. But I know some of them
little fires."

"We must make one some day. Won't it be fun!"

"It sure is when a fella ain't hustlin' to get grub. That poem sounds
better after grub, at night, when the stars are shinin' and the horses
grazin' and mebby the pack-horse bell jinglin' 'way off somewhere. Then
one of them little fires is sure friendly."

"Have you been reading this winter?"

"Oh, some. Mostly forestry and about the war. Bud was tellin' me to read
up on forestry. He's goin' to put me over west--and a bigger job this
summer."

"You mean--to stay?"