On the side of Gray Dome Mountain, with the sheer drop of the cañon at her feet and the range spread out beyond; in the midst of cleanness and silence unbroken since that old rocky backbone of the continent thrust itself up into the sun, she had risen slowly out of the shards of the life of Captain Mac and come, late but surely, into her heritage of womanliness and dignity. The years had chipped away her prettiness, but in its place was beauty for those who could see it. The smooth face had been sculptured into something fine and strong and self-directed, something steadfast and serene. She wasn’t blown about by tantrums any more. She had a stake in the game of life now, and she played to hold it. She had steadied to meet the responsibilities thrust upon her by Jim. He was as kind and patient as the seasons, and as unreliable. And she was like a cottonwood tree; she put out the leaves of her affection and confidence surely and abundantly, but with tireless caution and she rarely got nipped. She controlled him where he could be controlled, and where he couldn’t she accepted him as she did the weather. Her knowledge of men was empirical, unhampered by theories. Jim would give anybody anything she had--he possessed nothing himself--and be perennially surprized if she objected. Usually she didn’t, but if it was something she wanted she went after it and got it back if she could. Any bum or crook or sharper could win his friendship and pick his mind or his pocket if either happened to have anything in it. But Rosie’s mind was her own, and instead of a pocket she used the Conifer County Savings Bank. She met him at all points as shrewdly as if he had been an opponent--which in a sense he was--but she loved him. And she knew that he loved her, and counted on it, but only for what it was worth. She put more trust in his poverty. Every day, of course, he expected to strike it. And for a while she had thought he might. But gradually as the days lay themselves down in long, pleasantly monotonous rows until the sum of them made many years, she came to know that he wouldn’t. And that, far more than his love, was the foundation of her content. While he was poor he was hers--wholly, unqualifiedly, unthinkingly hers. Poor was scarcely the word, though. Jim lived in a moneyless world. Out of the little she made she supplied the simple necessities of both of them, and he was willing to wait for everything else until he struck it. “Then--! Then--!” was what he thought of as he made his slow way up and down the mountainside. To him the thought was roseate, luminous, rejuvenescent. But Rosie hated it. If for nothing else, because it held the seeds of possible change. After a chancy life, she valued most, of things attainable by human beings, a life that was free from chances.