“The Ranger will be able to tell whether the sheep have passed down the Ridge,” she explained.

The old man caught the light on her face as she spoke the name.  It was like the flash in the dark that betrays a diamond, or the scintilla of light through the leaves that tells of an Alpine lake; but he made no comment except to the ponies.

“Go it, little ones!  Make time!  Split the wind!  Show y’r heels!  Tear the air to tatters! there!” And he whirled the whip with the skill of all the old Adam stirring within him, while the buckboard went forward with a bounce.

“We can’t take the wagon up yon Ridge trail—­”

“No, but I can climb straight up and not mind the switch back, if you’ll wait.”

He muttered some commonplace about “true Westerner;” and, springing out, she had gone scrambling up the slope avoiding delay of the zig-zag by climbing almost straight.

Quizzically, the old man gazed after her; the first hundred feet were easy, a mossed slope with padded foot-hold.  Then came steep ground slippery with pine needles; but the mountain laurel and ground juniper gave hand grip; and she swung herself up past the third tier of the switch back where the Ridge arose a rock face and trees with two notches and one blaze marked the lower bounds of the National Forests.  Here he saw her run along the bridle trail marked by one notch and one blaze:  then, she was swinging over moraine slopes to the fifth bench of the trail.  There she disappeared round a jut of rock—­he remembered a mountain spring trickled out at this place bridged by spruce poles.  Then he noticed that the cumulous clouds which had been flashing sheet lightning all afternoon, were massing and darkening and lowering closer over the Valley, with zig-zag jags of live fire down to the ground and sounds more like the crack of a whip or splinter of wood than thunder.  The cliff swallows dipped almost to the grass; and the flowers were hanging their heads in miniature umbrellas.  All the trembling poplars and cotton-woods seemed to be furled waiting.  Then, the lower side of the slate clouds frayed in the edge of a sweepy garment to sheets and fringes of rain.  A little tremor ran through the leaves.  The horses laid back their ears.

“We’ll get it,” said the old man tightening the reins.

She had paused for breath round the buttress of a gray crag when she noticed the churn of yeasty blackness blotting out the Valley and felt the hushed heat of the air.  A jack rabbit went whipping past at long bounds.  The last rasp of a jay’s scold jangled out from the trees.  Then, she heard from the hushed Valley, the low flute trill of a blue bird’s love song.  Ever afterwards, either of those bird notes, the scurl of the jay or the golden melody of the blue warbler, brought her joyous, terrible thoughts, too keen to the very quick of being for either words or tears; for a horseman had turned the crag leading his broncho.  It was the Ranger in his sage green Service suit wearing a sprig of everlasting in his Alpine hat.