It is a crystalline afternoon in mid-autumn. Indian summer on the high plateaus of the continent's crest there is none, but instead, a breathing space of life-giving days, with the bouquet of fine old wine in the keen-edged air, and of frosty nights when the stars swing clear in illimitable space. Positive coloring, other than the sombre greens of pine and fir, is lacking. The season of bursting buds and quickening leaf tints is over, and what little deciduous vegetation the altitude permits is present only in twig traceries and sun-cured range grass. In the heart of the valley the heights are heavily wooded, and the sombre greens wall out the world to the sky-line; but farther on bald slopes and ridges stretch away above the pines and firs, and the blue arch of the firmament springs clear from snow-capped abutments of fallow dun and weathered gray. In the upper levels of the valley the disused trail leaves the stream and begins to climb by loops and zigzags to the pass. On the reverse curve of one of the loops--the last but one in the upward path--a solitary horseman sends his mount recklessly onward, heedless alike of stones of stumbling and the breath-cutting steepness of the way. His head is bandaged, and he rides loose in the saddle like a drunken man, swaying and reeling, but evermore urging the horse by word and blow and the drumming of unspurred heels. His feet are thrust far into the stirrups, and at every fresh vantage point he steadies himself by pommel and cantle to scan the backward windings of the trail. A man riding desperately for his life and against time, with a handicap of physical unfitness, one would say; but there would seem to be fierce determination in the unrelenting onpush, as if wounds and weariness were as yet no more than spurs to goad and whips to drive.