"I am sure, my dear," she cried, "I know a couple of hundred people on our summer circuit in the Upper Pass that I could make vote right." CHAPTER XXVIII THE UNITED STATES OF THE WORLD "Wayland, for a man who's had his head cut off, you look uncommon joyous, tho' you're a bit white about the chops." "Had a shave," answered Wayland dryly. The yellow buckboard was rattling over the pressed brick pavement of Smelter City towards the suburbs. Williams was in the front seat with Matthews, who was driving. Eleanor and Mrs. Williams were in the second seat, with Wayland standing behind as he had stood that night going up to the Rim Rocks. Behind trotted two range ponies with empty saddles. "I thought, perhaps, you'd prefer driving out beyond the suburbs," he had explained. "There's a good trail up to the hog's back opposite the _Brule_." They watched her leap down from the buckboard and mount the saddle, a little awkward at first whether to put the right knee fore or aft, from her Eastern training to a side saddle; and side saddles in the range country are rare as low neck gowns and tuxedo coats; but once she had caught the far stirrup, riding was riding. She had the pace, and the two figures loped off up the burn for the hill known as the _Brule_, Wayland turning and waving his hat. "Now the Lord have mercy on your soul, Williams. This ride will settle it; an' A'm not darin' t' hope which way it goes! A 'm not keen to go back empty-handed with yon little old lady payin' m' expenses heavy an' generous; but yet--but yet--" "Yet what?" asked Mrs. Williams, leaning forward between the two men. "Th' great joy comes only once; an' when it cam' t' me, A put a handspike thro' it, an' kept it." He had come to her that morning with a look on his face that she had not dreamed a human face could wear. She wondered if all men crucified for right won such joy. And he did not tread earth. He trod air. Eleanor could not trust her eyes to meet his. She felt their light burning to the centre of her soul. What was it? Was it renunciation? The thought turned her faint. Her determination to break his resolution seemed the cheap obtrusion of egotism on the great mission of a devoted life. Then, going up the hog's back trail along the rim of the Ridge, they were facing the Holy Cross Mountain. The glint of the morning sun on the far snows shone like diamonds, a tiared jeweled thing poised in mid-heaven like a crown held by invisible hands; the base of the lower mountain outlines melting and losing edge in the purple shadows; the crown only, shining diademed, winged with opal light. "Look Dick," she said pointing with her riding crop, "do you remember the night on the Ridge? Do you remember about the snow flakes massing to the avalanche? It has--hasn't it? The Nation has wakened up."