“But will you remember--will you promise to come to Pine?” “I reckon.” “Thank you. All's well, then.... My friend, goodby.” “Good-by,” he said, clasping her hand. His glance was clear, warm, beautiful, yet it was sad. Auchincloss's hearty voice broke the spell. Then Helen saw that the others were mounted. Bo had ridden up close; her face was earnest and happy and grieved all at once, as she bade good-by to Dale. The pack-burros were hobbling along toward the green slope. Helen was the last to mount, but Roy was the last to leave the hunter. Pedro came reluctantly. It was a merry, singing train which climbed that brown odorous trail, under the dark spruces. Helen assuredly was happy, yet a pang abided in her breast. She remembered that half-way up the slope there was a turn in the trail where it came out upon an open bluff. The time seemed long, but at last she got there. And she checked Ranger so as to have a moment's gaze down into the park. It yawned there, a dark-green and bright-gold gulf, asleep under a westering sun, exquisite, wild, lonesome. Then she saw Dale standing in the open space between the pines and the spruces. He waved to her. And she returned the salute. Roy caught up with her then and halted his horse. He waved his sombrero to Dale and let out a piercing yell that awoke the sleeping echoes, splitting strangely from cliff to cliff. “Shore Milt never knowed what it was to be lonesome,” said Roy, as if thinking aloud. “But he'll know now.” Ranger stepped out of his own accord and, turning off the ledge, entered the spruce forest. Helen lost sight of Paradise Park. For hours then she rode along a shady, fragrant trail, seeing the beauty of color and wildness, hearing the murmur and rush and roar of water, but all the while her mind revolved the sweet and momentous realization which had thrilled her--that the hunter, this strange man of the forest, so deeply versed in nature and so unfamiliar with emotion, aloof and simple and strong like the elements which had developed him, had fallen in love with her and did not know it. CHAPTER XV Dale stood with face and arm upraised, and he watched Helen ride off the ledge to disappear in the forest. That vast spruce slope seemed to have swallowed her. She was gone! Slowly Dale lowered his arm with gesture expressive of a strange finality, an eloquent despair, of which he was unconscious. He turned to the park, to his camp, and the many duties of a hunter. The park did not seem the same, nor his home, nor his work. “I reckon this feelin's natural,” he soliloquized, resignedly, “but it's sure queer for me. That's what comes of makin' friends. Nell an' Bo, now, they made a difference, an' a difference I never knew before.” He calculated that this difference had been simply one of responsibility, and then the charm and liveliness of the companionship of girls, and finally friendship. These would pass now that the causes were removed.