neither of you raise a hand to help the party; and I'm a plain party
man; yes, I guess, Miss Eleanor--I'm a spoilsman, all right; and you
come asking favors of me. It isn't reasonable; but I'll tell you what
I'll do. I'll show you that I'm ready to meet you in a fair half-way!
MacDonald, you and Williams and the Kid, there, go along and see if
that saddle can be crossed, here to the Rim Rocks. If it can't, you
can come down through the Valley and pass your sheep up through my
ranch. I guess it's light enough yet for you to see. The gully is not
five minutes away. Bat, you go off and entertain Miss Eleanor. I want
to talk to Wayland here."


Wayland was in no mood for straddling, for palaver, for "carrying water
on both shoulders." He was weary to death of talk and compromise and
temporize and discretionize and all the other "izes" by which the
politicians were hedging right and wrong and somehow euchring the many
in the interests of the few and transforming democracy into plutocracy.
Besides, memory that merged to conscious realization was playing in
lambent flames through his whole being round the form of the figure
against the skyline of the Ridge.


The light of the cow-boy camp blinked through the lilac mist of the
Valley. A veil impalpable as dreams hovered over the River. The boom
and roll of a snow cornice falling somewhere in the Gorge behind the
Holy Cross came in dull rolling muffled thunder through the spruce
forests. Had her eyes flashed it in that recognition of love; or had
she said it; or had the thought been born of the peace that had come?
It kept coming back and back to Wayland as the boom of falling snow
faded, _as if one man or generation of men, could stay the workings of