hay from the ranch buildings to The Forks. By some deft touch of those
financial strings on which he was one day to become so skilled a player
Transley converted his dump scrapers into mowing machines, and three
days later his outfit was at work in the upper reaches of the Y.D.

The contract had been decidedly profitable. Not an hour of broken
weather had interrupted the operations, and to-day, with two thousand
tons of hay in stack, Transley was moving down to the headquarters of
the Y.D. The trail lay along a broad valley, warded on either side by
ranges of foothills; hills which in any other country would have been
dignified by the name of mountains. From their summits the grey-green
up-tilted limestone protruded, whipped clean of soil by the chinooks of
centuries. Here and there on their northern slopes hung a beard of
scrub timber; sharp gulleys cut into their fastnesses to bring down the
turbulent waters of their snows.

Some miles to the left of the trail lay the bed of the Y.D., fringed
with poplar and cottonwood and occasional dark green splashes of spruce.
Beyond the bed of the Y.D., beyond the foothills that looked down upon
it, hung the mountains themselves, their giant crests pitched like
mighty tents drowsing placidly between earth and heaven. Now their four
o'clock veil of blue-purple mist lay filmed about their shoulders, but
later they would stand out in bold silhouette cutting into the twilight
sky. Everywhere was the soft smell of new-mown hay; everywhere the
silences of the eternal, broken only by the muffled noises of Transley's
outfit trailing down to the Y.D.

Linder, foreman and head teamster, cushioned his shoulders against his
half load of hay and contemplated the scene with amiable satisfaction.
The hay fields of the foothills had been a pleasant change from the