And because she had graduated from girl to woman between sunset and daydawn of that Death Watch, she kissed the last signature, right in the midst of the German cook’s dishes, set all higgeldy-piggeldy on the oilcloth top instead of the linen cover, owing to the distraction of the night’s tragedy.  It was his first love letter; and because it was his first, he did not know it was a love letter.  He had written it on the pages of a field note book.  On the reverse side, were figures of triangulations and scaled timbers, which Eleanor fingered lovingly because the dumb signs seemed to connect her life with his before—­before what?  Ask those who know!

The note was lying at her breakfast place when she came out from a sleepless night, a night that seemed to pass swinging between the gates of Life and the gates of Death, with phantoms on the trail between, of Love so terrible its glory blinded her, of Crime so dark its shadow obscured her faith in God.  For hours, she had lain quivering to the consciousness of that moment when Life leaped up to meet and blend with Life in Love.  For hours, she had lain quivering to the consciousness of Crime stalking satyr-faced amid the shadows of Life, Greed and Murder and Lust, hiding beneath suave words, behind conventionality, draped in all the broad phalacteries of law, ready to leap fanged at the throat of Innocence in a Land of Let-Alone; and she emerged from the conflict of these two forces no longer what would be called a Christian, no longer a Quiescent, no longer a Let Alone.  She emerged knowing that Democracy must become a joke, and Christianity the laughing stock of the ages, unless Right could be made over into Might.

Then, she found the Ranger’s note at her late breakfast—­it was a shockingly late breakfast, it was after the noon hour—­the note saying that he had set out on the Long Trail that the Nation must travel, the trail of the Man behind the Thing, the Man Higher Up.  It was as it had been from the first with him, the meeting half-way of their thoughts from different beginnings; and she kissed the signature with a gesture that played havoc with the breakfast dishes and sent Calamity snivelling and muttering from the kitchen.  The ignorant half-breed’s knowledge of life among the miners of the Black Hills and the shingle men of the Bitter Boot saw-mills didn’t admit explanations of love that kissed signatures and impelled tears.

And yet while revolution convulsed two souls you could have gone from end to end of the Valley that week or to every cabin on the Homestead Claim of the Ridge and not heard a living soul speak one word of the tragedy on the Rim Rocks.  Were they moral cowards?  I don’t think so.  Wasn’t it more of that spirit of Let Alone?  If you had mentioned the terrible episode to a casual settler, he would have given you a blank look and remarked “that he hadn’t heard.”