But still the path did not dip back. It reached straight up. But Johnny would not abandon it. He seemed to feel it inextricably united with his own rightness of decision, and since he was inevitably right, so inevitably the path must disclose its desired character.
But once or twice he paused and looked out over the way. Then, hopefully, Ri-Ri hung upon his expression, longing for reconsideration. But he never faltered, always on her approach he charged ahead again.
No holding back of brambles, now. No helping over logs. Johnny was the pathfinder, oblivious, intent, and Ri-Ri, the pioneer woman, enduring as best she might.
Up he drove, straight up the mountain side, and after him scrambled the girl, her fears voiceless in her throat, her heart pounding with exertion and anxiety like a ship's engine in her side.
Time seemed interminable. There was no sun now. The gray and white clouds were spread thinly over the sky and only a diffused brightness gave the suggestion of the west.
When the path wound through woods it seemed already night. On barren slopes the day was clear again.
Hours passed. Endless hours to the tired-footed girl. They had left the last woods behind them now and reached a clearing of bracken among the granite, and here Johnny Byrd stopped, and stared out with an unconcealed bewilderment that turned her hopes to lead.
With him, she stared out at the great gray peaks closing in about them without recognizing a friend among them. Dim and unfamiliar they loomed, shrouded in clouds, like chilly giants in gray mufflers against the damp.
It was not old Baldy. It could not be old Baldy. One looked up at old Baldy from the Lodge and she had heard that from old Baldy one looked down upon the Lodge and the river and the opening valley. She had been told that from old Baldy the Martin chalet resembled a cuckoo clock. . . .
No cuckoo clocks in those vague sweeps below.