“I couldn’t run—­I couldn’t move,” she said, shuddering.  A blush drove the white from her cheeks as she raised her face to Jack.  “He’d soon have reached me.”

Piute added his encomium:  “Damn—­heap big bear—­ Jack kill um—­big chief!”

Hare laughed away his own fear and turned their attention to the stampeded sheep.  It was dark before they got the flock together again, and they never knew whether they had found them all.  Supper-time was unusually quiet that night.  Piute was jovial, but no one appeared willing to talk save the peon, and he could only grimace.  The reaction of feeling following Mescal’s escape had robbed Jack of strength of voice; he could scarcely whisper.  Mescal spoke no word; her black lashes hid her eyes; she was silent, but there was that in her silence which was eloquent.  Wolf, always indifferent save to Mescal, reacted to the subtle change, and as if to make amends laid his head on Jack’s knees.  The quiet hour round the camp-fire passed, and sleep claimed them.  Another day dawned, awakening them fresh, faithful to their duties, regardless of what had gone before.

So the days slipped by.  June came, with more leisure for the shepherds, better grazing for the sheep, heavier dews, lighter frosts, snow-squalls half rain, and bursting blossoms on the prickly thorns, wild-primrose patches in every shady spot, and bluebells lifting wan azure faces to the sun.

The last snow-storm of June threatened all one morning; hung menacing over the yellow crags, in dull lead clouds waiting for the wind.  Then like ships heaving anchor to a single command they sailed down off the heights; and the cedar forest became the centre of a blinding, eddying storm.  The flakes were as large as feathers, moist, almost warm.  The low cedars changed to mounds of white; the sheep became drooping curves of snow; the little lambs were lost in the color of their own pure fleece.  Though the storm had been long in coming it was brief in passing.  Wind-driven toward the desert, it moaned its last in the cedars, and swept away, a sheeted pall.  Out over the Canyon it floated, trailing long veils of white that thinned out, darkened, and failed far above the golden desert.  The winding columns of snow merged into straight lines of leaden rain; the rain flowed into vapory mist, and the mist cleared in the gold-red glare of endless level and slope.  No moisture reached the parched desert.

Jack marched into camp with a snowy burden over his shoulder.  He flung it down, disclosing a small deer; then he shook the white mantle from his coat, and whistling, kicked the fire-logs, and looked abroad at the silver cedars, now dripping under the sun, at the rainbows in the settling mists, at the rapidly melting snow on the ground.

“Got lost in that squall.  Fine!  Fine!” he exclaimed, and threw wide his arms.

“Jack!” said Mescal.  “Jack!” Memory had revived some forgotten thing.  The dark olive of her skin crimsoned; her eyes dilated and shadowed with a rare change of emotion.