They stopped, too tired for profanity, and gazed down the mountainside
after the manner of baffled men, who look far off from the thing that
troubles them. They could tell by the trees that it was a high
altitude. There were no cottonwoods, though the cottonwoods will
follow a stream for more than a mile above sea level. Far below them a
pale mist obscured the beautiful silver spruce which had reached their
upward limit. Around the cabin marched a scattering of the balsam fir.
They were nine thousand feet above the sea, at least. Still higher up
the sallow forest of lodgepole pines began; and above these, beyond
the timberline, rose the bald summit itself.

They were big men, framed for such a country, defying the roughness
with a roughness of their own--these stalwart sons of old Bill
Campbell. Both Harry and Joe Campbell were fully six feet tall, with
mighty bones and sinews and work-toughened muscles to justify their
stature. Behind them stood their home, a shack better suited for the
housing of cattle than of men. But such leather-skinned men as these
were more tender to their horses than to themselves. They slept and
ate in the shack, but they lived in the wind and the sun.

Although they had looked down the stern slopes to the lower Rockies,
they did not see the girl who followed the loosely winding trail. She
was partly sheltered by the firs and came out just above them. They
began moiling at the stump again, sweating, cursing, and the girl
halted her horse near by. The profanity did not distress her. She was
so accustomed to it that the words had lost all edge and point for
her; but her freckled face stirred to a smile of pleasure at the sight
of their strength, as they alternately smote at the taproot and then
strove in creaking, grunting unison to work it loose.