“I don’t believe I understand the Rocky Mountains,” she reflected as she lay, limp and flat, looking across the barren valley, the sparsely wooded slopes, to the rising peaks opposite. She had been accustomed to mountains like the Adirondacks, round and covered thick with forest almost to the summit, friendly heights that invited one to climb them. It was a far cry from them to the precipitate slopes of Gray Cloud Mountain.
When she had recovered a little she gave up her project and slid humbly down the steep way she had come. Buck, with his bridle over the post at the cabin door, whinnied an anxious welcome as she came back to him. He had been searching for tufts of grass between the stones, and had also nipped at the pansies, but had found them not to his liking. His impatience, as well as the creeping shadows in the valley below, reminded her that evening was near despite the clear sunshine higher up the mountainside. Reluctantly she mounted and, with many a glance backward at her house, rode down the trail.
Through an opening in the trees Beatrice caught a glimpse, as she descended, of the house beyond the stream. She could even see a man ride up to the door and a girl come running out to greet him. Then a drop in the trail hid both house and people abruptly from her view.
The warm sun seemed to be left completely behind as she and Buck pressed onward with all possible haste. Something new caught her curious attention in a moment, however, and made her stop again. To the right of the pathway, in a little clearing among the pines, she had spied the glow of a tiny fire.
“Who is burning brush on my land?” she questioned inwardly, with a throb of pride at the thought of her proprietorship.
Guiding her horse among the trees, she rode a little nearer to investigate. The blaze was kindled skilfully between two stones, evidently by the hands of some one who knew the dangers of careless camp-fires in a pine grove. Bending over the crackling flame was a woman, with a yellow handkerchief covering her hair and a green shawl slanting about her hips above a shabby skirt. A big basket stood beside her, showing that she had been gathering berries in the wood, while an appetizing smell rising from the fire told of a supper of bacon and fresh trout. The smoke was in her eyes and she was, moreover, intent on balancing the frying-pan between the stones, so that she did not see Beatrice. For this the girl was thankful, since, after a glance at the other’s broad, brown face, she concluded that one ill-mannered foreigner was all she wished to encounter that day and that she would push her investigations no further. She turned her pony to make for the path again, but a rolling stone, dislodged by Buck’s foot, attracted the woman’s attention. Beatrice looked back to see that the stranger had abandoned her cooking and was standing erect, staring intently after them.
“At least she cannot follow,” thought the girl with some relief; then observed, with a sinking of the heart, that the woman had turned abruptly and was hurrying down the hill through the underbrush. It was plain that she intended to reach the road first and intercept the horse and rider at the bridge.
CHAPTER II
THE DEPARTURE OF JOE LING
The yellow pony, stamping and sidling, came to an unwilling stop before the sturdy figure that blocked the way. Beatrice began to see that the red firelight had made the woman seem unduly terrifying and that her face, while it was sunburnt almost to the color of leather, was merely a square, stolid one, with keen, blue eyes and heavy, fair hair showing under the picturesque head handkerchief. With one hard, big hand, the stranger was feeling within her dress and, as Beatrice came close, she held up a letter.
“I saw you in town yesterday, and you looked kind. I want you to read my letter to me; I cannot read English myself. My name is Christina Jensen. The letter is from my boy.”