Wade soon crossed the flat-topped pass over the range and faced a
descent, rocky and bare at first, but yielding gradually to the
encroachment of green. He left the cold winds and bleak trails above
him. In an hour, when he was half down the slope, the forest had become
warm and dry, fragrant and still. At length he rode out upon the brow of
a last wooded bench above a grassy valley, where a bright, winding
stream gleamed in the sun. While the horses rested Wade looked about
him. Nature never tired him. If he had any peace it emanated from the
silent places, the solemn hills, the flowers and animals of the wild and
lonely land.

A few straggling pines shaded this last low hill above the valley. Grass
grew luxuriantly there in the open, but not under the trees, where the
brown needle-mats jealously obstructed the green. Clusters of columbines
waved their graceful, sweet, pale-blue flowers that Wade felt a joy in
seeing. He loved flowers--columbines, the glory of Colorado, came first,
and next the many-hued purple asters, and then the flaunting spikes of
paint-brush, and after them the nameless and numberless wild flowers
that decked the mountain meadows and colored the grass of the aspen
groves and peeped out of the edge of snow fields.

"Strange how it seems good to live--when I look at a columbine--or watch
a beaver at his work--or listen to the bugle of an elk!" mused Bent
Wade. He wondered why, with all his life behind him, he could still find
comfort in these things.

Then he rode on his way. The grassy valley, with its winding stream,
slowly descended and widened, and left foothill and mountain far behind.
Far across a wide plain rose another range, black and bold against the