The climate of the Rockies, year in, year out, is the most stimulating on earth. Its summer breezes fill the lungs with wine. Its autumns are incomparable, a golden glow in which valley and hill bask lazily. Its winters are warm with sunshine and cold with the crisp crackle of frost. Its springs—they might be worse. Any Coloradoan will admit the climate is superlative. But there is one slight rift in the lute, hardly to be mentioned as a discord in the universal harmony. Sudden weather changes do occur. A shining summer sun vanishes and in a twinkling of an eye the wind is whistling snell.
Now one of these swept over the Rio Blanco Valley. The clouds thickened, the air grew chill. The thermometer was falling fast.
Houck swung the team up from the valley road to the mesa. Along this they traveled, close to the sage-covered foothills. At a point where a draw dipped down to the road, Houck pulled up and dismounted. A gate made of three strands of barbed wire and two poles barred the wagon trail. For already the nester was fencing the open range.
As Houck moved forward to the gate the moon disappeared back of the banked clouds. June’s eye swept the landscape and brightened. The sage and the brush were very thick here. A grove of close-packed quaking asps filled the draw. She glanced at Jake. He was busy wrestling with the loop of wire that fastened the gate.
God helps those that help themselves, June remembered. She put down the lines Houck had handed her, stepped softly from the buckboard, and slipped into the quaking asps.
A moment later she heard Jake’s startled oath. It was certain that he would plunge into the thicket of saplings in pursuit. She crept to one side of the draw and crouched low.
He did not at once dive in. From where she lay hidden, June could hear the sound of his footsteps as he moved to and fro.
“Don’t you try to make a fool of Jake Houck, girl,” he called to her angrily. “I ain’t standin’ for any nonsense now. We got to be movin’ right along. Come outa there.”
Her heart was thumping so that she was afraid he might hear it. She held herself tense, not daring to move a finger lest she make a rustling of leaves.
“Hear me, June! Git a move on you. If you don’t—” He broke off, with another oath. “I’ll mark yore back for you sure enough with my whip when I find you.”