A long coo-ee below the ledge interrupted his meditation. A young rider leaped from the trail to the level before the schoolhouse, broke into a gallop and slid, with sparks flying, to the door. "Hello, Scott!" said Douglas, without enthusiasm. "I thought Jude was here!" returned Scott. He was older and heavier than Douglas, freckled of face and sandy of hair, with something hard in his hazel eyes. "He'd better leave Jude alone," thought Douglas, "the mangy pinto!" There was a shriek and a gray horse, carrying a youth with the schoolmarm clinging behind him, flew across the yard and reared to avoid breaking his knees on the steps. The schoolmarm scrambled down, still screaming protests at the grinning rider. One after another now arrived, perhaps a dozen youngsters, varying in age from five to eighteen, each on his or her own lean, half-broken horse, each appearing with the same flying leap from the steep trail to the level, each racing across the yard as if with intent to burst through the schoolhouse door, each bringing up with the same pull back of foaming horse to its haunches. And with each horse came a dog of highly varied breed. The youngsters had been racing about the ledge for some time before the grown people began to appear. The women, most of them very handsome, were dressed dowdily in mackinaws and anomalous foot covering. But the men were resplendent in chaps and short leather coats, with gay silk neckerchiefs, with silver spurs and embossed saddles. When Judith returned with Maud Day there were thirty or forty people and almost as many dogs milling about the yard. The log school had weathered against the red wall of the mesa for fifty years. There probably was not a person in the crowd who had not gone to school there, who did not, like Judith, love every log in its ugly sides. Judith caught Douglas' sardonic gaze, tossed her curly head and urged Swift up the steps, where she looked toward the road to the Pass, shading her fine eyes with a mittened hand. Finally she cried, "I see the preacher coming!" "Somebody ought to go in and build the fire if we ain't going to freeze to death!" exclaimed Grandma Brown, jogging up on a flea-bitten black mule. "He invited himself. Let him build his own fire!" cried Douglas. Grandma pulled her spectacles down from her forehead to the bridge of her capable nose, and stared at Douglas. "Well! Well! Doesn't take 'em long away from the nursing bottle to get smarty. Where's your father, Douglas?" "Home with the toothache," replied Doug, flushed and irritated. "Did he bring you up to let a stranger come to the house and build his own fire?" "No, but it's the schoolmarm's job to build this one," replied Douglas. "Jimmy Day, you and Doug go in and get that old stove going!" ordered Grandma. Both boys dismounted slowly, tied their horses, and amidst a general chuckle, disappeared into the schoolhouse.