woodlands; when somewhere above
there is the open sky and the marching sun, the twilight underworld of
the green-roofed caverns is a magic land.

The ponies plodded slowly upward, to turn and plod up the next angle of
the trail, without loitering and without haste. When Dorothy checked her
pony to gaze at some new vista, the pack-animals rested, waiting for the
word to go on again. Lorry, awakened to a new charm in Dorothy, rode in
a silence that needed no interpreter.

At a bend in the trail, Dorothy reined up. "Oh, I just noticed! You are
wearing your chaps this morning."

Lorry flushed, and turned to tie a saddle-string that was already quite
secure.

Dorothy nodded to herself and spoke to the horses. They strained on up a
steeper pitch, pausing occasionally to rest.

Lorry seemed to have regained his old manner. Her mention of the chaps
had wakened him to everyday affairs. After all, she was only a girl; not
yet eighteen, her father had said. "Just a kid," Lorry had thought; "but
mighty pretty in those city clothes." He imagined that some women he had
seen would look like heck in such a riding-coat and breeches. But
Dorothy looked like a kind of stylish boy-girl, slim and yet not quite
as slender as she had appeared in her ordinary clothes. Lorry could not
help associating her appearance with a thoroughbred he had once seen; a
dark-bay colt, satin smooth and as graceful as a flame. He had all but
worshiped that horse. Even as he knew horses, through that colt he had
seen perfection; his ideal of something beautiful beyond words.

From his pondering, Lorry arrived at a conclusion having nothing to do
with ideals. He would buy a new suit of clothes the first time he went
to Phoenix. It would be a trim suit of corduroy and a dark-green flannel
shirt, like the suit and shirt worn by Lundy, the forestry expert.

At the base of a great gray shoulder of granite, the Big Spring spread
in its natural rocky bowl which grew shallower toward the edges. Below
the spring in the black mud softened by the overflow were the tracks of
wild turkey and the occasional print of a lynx pad. The bush had been
cleared from around the spring, and the ashes of an old camp-fire marked
the spot where Lorry had often "bushed over-night" on his way to the
cabin.

Lorry dismounted and tied the pack-horses. He explained that they were
still a little too close to home to be trusted untied.

Dorothy decided that she was hungry, although th