“We get out here,” Ruth told her husband. She settled with the owner of the car, and the man started back to Rawlins. Opposite the store where they had stopped was a corral. Ruth led the way to it. Three horses were eating hay from a rack. Rowan looked at them, then at Ruth. He had recognized two of the animals, and the third one showed on the flank the Circle Diamond brand. “Am I to ask questions yet?” McCoy wanted to know. “If you like,” she smiled. “Are we to ride home on the pinto and old Duke?” “Yes.” “And the sorrel?” “For a pack horse.” “You have supplies and a tent?” “Jennings brought them.” He took a deep breath of delight. For three days and nights they would be alone, buried together in the eternal hills. Such a home-coming as this had been beyond his dreams. “Are you—glad?” she asked, and her voice was tremulous. “Glad!” He spoke a little roughly to hide his deep feeling. “If I could only let you know how I feel! If I could!” Her heart jumped with a sudden gladness. Rowan did not want to meet his friends yet. He wanted to be alone with her and the baby. This was to be, then, their true honeymoon, the seal of their love for each other. Rowan saddled the horses and packed the third animal, throwing the diamond hitch expertly. His wife watched him work. It was a joy to see how the vigour of his spirit found expression in the economy of his movements, in the certainty of his fingers, in the easy power of the shoulders muscled so beautifully where the bronzed neck sloped into them. Presently they were moving into the bigger hills. They saw no more sage chickens or antelope, but as they wound deeper into the mountains his keen eye detected signs of life that escaped her observation. He made her get down once to look at the trail of an elk. “We’ve been following his trail from that pine back there,” McCoy told her. “He’s a big fellow, and he was on his way down to water. But he got scared right here, I expect. Maybe he heard us coming, or maybe he smelled a bear. Anyhow, he plunged right into the aspens without waiting to say good-bye.” “How do you know all that? I believe you’re spoofing, as one of our riders, an Englishman, sometimes tells me when I joke him.” “He’s left signposts all along the way. There’s one track. See? And there’s another. They’re big tracks and they are far apart. The spread of his forefeet shows that he’s a bull. Now notice where he broke the brush here and how trampled down the young aspens are. His horn ripped the bark clear off this tree. See how far from the ground it is. That shows his height.” “Yes, but how do you know he was frightened?” “He dived into the brush mighty reckless. Why didn’t he wait and turn off there by the big rock where the going would be easy? I reckon he thought he hadn’t time.”