On an August morning Ruth, dawdling over breakfast alone, glimpsed through the dining-room window a rider galloping toward the ranch. Since Rowan had been in the saddle and away long before she was awake, the young woman answered the hail from without by going to the door. The horseman had dismounted, flung the bridle rein to the ground, and was coming up the porch steps when Ruth appeared. He lifted the broad hat from his curly head and bowed. “Rowan at home?” he asked. “No, he isn’t.” Swift anger blazed in the eyes of the girl. She had seen this slender, black-haired stranger twice before, once in the orchard of the Dude Ranch, again astride a volcanic bronco in the arena at Bad Ax. Some wise instinct warned him not to smile. He spoke gravely. “Sorry. I’ve got news for him. It’s important. Where is he?” “I don’t know.” “Did he say when he would be back?” “No.” Ruth cut short the conversation curtly. “I’ll send one of the boys to talk with you.” She turned and walked into the house, leaving him on the porch. Out of the tail of her eye she caught sight of her husband riding into the yard with his foreman. From the dining-room window she presently watched McCoy canter away in the company of Silcott. Ruth was annoyed, even though she recognized that her vexation at Rowan was not quite fair. It was true that he had lately fallen into a habit of disappearing for a day at a time without explanation of his absence. He was worried about something, and he had not made a confidante of her. This was bad enough, but what she resented most was the fact that he was on the best of terms with the handsome young scamp who had kissed her so blithely in the orchard. Of course she had no right to blame her husband for this, since she had never told him of the episode. Yet she did. For her mind moved by impulse and not by logic. She wandered into the kitchen and whipped together a salad for luncheon. She knitted two rows on a sweater at which she was working, and flung it aside to plunge into one of Chopin’s waltzes at the piano. But Ruth was not in the mood for music. Restlessly she turned to a magazine, fingered the pages aimlessly, read at a story for a paragraph or two, then with a sudden decision tossed the periodical on the table and walked out of the house to the garage. Yet a minute, and she was spinning down the road toward Bovier’s Camp. It was such a day in late summer as comes only to the Rockies. From a blue sky, flecked with a few mackerel clouds, poured a bath of sunshine. Her lungs drank in an air like wine, pure and strong. The sunny slopes of the high peaks pushed up into the rare, untempered light of Wyoming. The scent of the pines was in her nostrils. Once, when she stopped to look at a doubtful tire, the murmurous voices of the desert whispered in her ears. In spite of herself Ruth’s heart answered the call of the distant, shining mountain to rejoice and be glad.