In front of the riders loomed the twin peaks of Dos Hermanos, rising into the very clouds. For more than three-fourths of the way up, there were lush forest and meadow. Then, the timberline halted abruptly; like the ring of hair that encircles a baldheaded man’s skull. Above timber line, on each peak, was a smooth expanse of rock; crowned by snow. The foothills were passed by; and now the indiscriminate green of the left hand peak, whither the riders were moving, took on a hundred irregularities. The brown and twisting trail upward, through rock-shoulders, could be seen in spots. So could the dense forests and the softer green of the cleared grazing lands. Adown the left peak roared the torrential little Chiquita River, broken in fifty places by cataract and cascade;--the river that is born among the mountain-top springs and is fed by melting snows from the summit. By reason of the innumerable inequalities of ground and the erratic course of the rock-ledges, this mountain stream forms roughly a half-moon in its descent; and is joined and reënforced, three-fourths of the way down, by the Pico, a tributary rivulet from adjacent summit-springs; forming a “Y,” that encloses perhaps five square miles of the wildest and most inaccessible section of the left slope. By reason of the trickiness of the Chiquita River and of the narrower Pico, the sheepmen seldom lead their flocks into the “Y.” Not only is much of the pasturage bad, but the streams are subject to sudden freshets from unduly swift melting of the summit snows. Thus, flocks venturing into the enclosure are liable to be cut off unexpectedly from the outer world or even to be swept to death in attempting to cross. Wherefore the place is shunned by man and sheep. And as a result it long since became the winter haunt of such wild animals as spend the rest of the year on the inaccessible upper reaches of the left peak. In another hour of steady riding, the partners had reached the lower plateau of pasturage on which they had told their men to have the Dos Hermanos sheep rounded up, this day, for the drive to the ranch. There, on the rolling plateau, they found their flocks and shepherds awaiting them; the little black collies busily keeping the mass of milling and silly sheep in some semblance of formation. The partners had left the ranch house while the big autumn moon was still yellow in the sky. The sun had barely risen when they reached the plateau. Within another half hour the long procession of woolly sheep and their attendant men and dogs were starting down the twisty trail toward the far-off valley;--the partners arranging to camp for the night among the foothills and to reach the ranch some time the next day.