On a steep and narrow grade they encountered a girl of twenty riding a spirited pinto.  She bestrode a cowboy’s stock saddle on which was coiled the usual rope, wore a broad felt hat, and smiled at the two men quite frankly in spite of the fact that she wore no habit and had been compelled to arrange her light calico skirts as best she could.  The pinto threw his head and snorted, dancing sideways at sight of the buckboard.  So occupied was he with the strange vehicle that he paid scant attention to the edge of the road.  Bob saw that the passage along the narrow outside strip was going to be precarious.  He prepared to descend, but at that moment the girl faced her pony squarely at the edge of the road, dug her little heels into his flanks, and flicked him sharply with the morale or elongated lash of the reins.  Without hesitation the pony stepped off the grade, bunched his hoofs and slid down the precipitous slope.  So steep was the hill that a man would have had to climb it on all fours.

Bob gasped and rose to his feet.  The pony, leaving a long furrow in the side of the mountain, caught himself on the narrow ledge of a cattle trail, turned to the left, and disappeared at a little fox trot.

Bob looked at this companion.  Welton laughed.

“There’s hardly a woman in the country that doesn’t help round up stock.  How’d you like to chase a cow full speed over this country, hey?”

As they progressed, mounting slowly, but steadily, the character of the country changed.  The canons through which flowed the streams became deeper and more precipitous; the divides between them higher.  At one point where the road emerged on a bold, clear point, Bob looked back to the shimmering plain, and was astonished to see how high they had climbed.  To the eastward and only a few miles distant rose the dark mass of a pine-covered ridge, austere and solemn, the first rampart of the Sierras.  Welton pointed to it with his whip.

“There’s our timber,” said he simply.

A little farther along the buckboard drew rein at the top of a long declivity that led down to a broad wooded valley.  Among the trees Bob caught a glimpse of the roofs of scattered houses, and the gleam of a river.  From the opposite edge of the valley rose the mountain-ridge, sheer and noble.  The light of afternoon tinted it with lilac and purple.

“That’s the celebrated town of Sycamore Flats,” said Welton.  “Just at present we’re the most important citizens.  This fellow here’s the first yellow pine on the road.”

Bob looked upon what he then considered a rather large tree.  Later he changed his mind.  The buckboard rattled down the grade, swung over a bridge, and so into the little town.  Welton drew up at a low, broad structure set back from the street among some trees.

“We’ll tackle the mountain to-morrow,” said he.

Bob descended with a distinct feeling of pleasure at being able to use his legs again.  He and Welton and the baggage and everything about the buckboard were powdered thick with the fine, white California dust.  At every movement he shook loose a choking cloud.  Welton’s face was a dull gray, ludicrously streaked, and he suspected himself of being in the same predicament.  A boy took the horses, and the travellers entered the picketed enclosure.  Welton lifted up his great rumbling voice.