"On your head be it!" he murmured. "I am going to try!"
He climbed the trail to his house, washed and brushed himself and went over to the tent house. Pen was sitting on the doorstep. Oscar Ames was talking to Sara.
"Hello, Sara!" said Jim coolly. "Pen, I've got a free hour. Will you come up back of the camp with me and let me show you the view from Wind Ridge? It's finer than what you get from the Elephant."
Sara's face was inscrutable. Oscar said nothing. Pen laid aside her book and picked up her hat.
"I knew there was something the matter with me," she said gaily. "It was Wind Ridge I was missing though I never heard of it before! I won't be long, Sara."
"Don't hurry on my account," said Sara, with a sardonic glance at Jim.
The trail led up the mountain slope with a steady twist toward a ridge at the top that showed a sawtooth edge. Almost to the top the mountain was dotted with little green cedars, dwarfed and wind-tortured. Up at the saw edge they stopped. Here the wind caught them, wind flooding across desert and mountain, clean, sweet, with a marvelous tang to it, despite the desert heat.
"Why, it's a world of lavenders!" cried Pen.
Jim nodded and steadied her against the great warm rush of the wind. Far to the east beyond the purple Elephant the San Juan mountains lay on the horizon. They were the faintest, clearest blue lavender, with iridescent peaks merging into the iridescent sky. The desert that swept toward the Elephant was a yellow lavender. The mountain that bore the ridge was a gray lavender. To the west, three great ranges vied with each other in melting tints of purple, that now were blue, now were lavender. The two might have been sitting at the top of the world, the sweep of the view and the sense of exaltation in it were so great.
Mighty white clouds rushed across the sky, sweeping their blue shadows over the desert, like ripples in the wake of huge sailing ships.