Here yellow California poppies were blooming late among the grasses, their orange-gold beauty staying the destructive hand of old Jack Frost as a soft answer turneth away wrath. The air was warm, delectable. The willows and cottonwoods were losing their leaves, but as yet their branches were far from nude. Over a carpet of grass the explorers wandered toward the river and the untarnished land about it--toward grotesque cliffs that in the distance upreared themselves from the level land, toward enchanted forests that intrigued them from afar. Charmian’s depression had gone. She was bright-eyed, vivacious, eager as a child. Shonto subdued his gloomy thoughts and made himself enter into the spirit of the quest; for he knew that, for him, there might not be another day in the valley that they had come so far to see. They reached the river. It was wide and deep, and the jade-green hue of its waters that had lured them from above no longer was revealed. Height and distance had given the river colour, for now it was like any other clear, cold mountain stream. Its course was boulder-strewn, its bottom often pebbly. Large trout flashed in the sunlit riffles, where the water was like shaved ice, or lay like amber pencils in shaded pools. They came upon ancient bridge abutments, fashioned of large stones, the crumbling red adobe mortar still to be seen in the crevices. Once a bridge had spanned the river at this point, probably merely a long pine log, axed to flatness on the upper side, and suspended between the pillars, Shonto said. They followed the river’s course, almost despairing of finding a crossing. The doctor shot a jackrabbit sleeping under a bush, long ears laid back along his spine. They continued up the river for an hour, through a forest of oaks and alders and an occasional spruce; then they came to a narrow place through which a torrent roared. Here grew handily a clump of straight, tall alders, and with his hunting axe Shonto set about felling one so that it would fall across the cataract and bridge the gap for them. Alders are not tough-fibred, and soon the tree was swaying. It leaned nearly in the right direction, and Charmian pushed at it as he completed the last few strokes. It groaned and started down. Shonto sprang up and aided the girl at pushing, then jerked her back to safety as the tree crashed down. It fell directly athwart the stream, with each end resting on solid stone. Shonto crossed with both packs, walking sidewise, cautiously springing the trunk to test its strength. Then he returned to Charmian, face to the front, stepping easily and confidently. “A romance is never complete,” he smiled, “until the he character has carried the she character from one side of a stream of water to the other in his arms. Or maybe you’d prefer to go hippety-hop to the barber shop on my manly back.” She studied a moment. Then, with a trace of colour sweeping her face, she faltered: “Which--whichever way you think better, Doctor.”