Lem dropped his head, evidently to hide his expression.  “Wal, dog-gone me!” he ejaculated.  “Thet’s too bad.”

Columbine left the cowboy and rode up the lane toward Wade’s cabin.  She did not analyze her deliberate desire to tell the truth about that fight, but she would have liked to proclaim it to the whole range and to the world.  Once clear of the house she felt free, unburdened, and to talk seemed to relieve some congestion of her thoughts.

The hounds heralded Columbine’s approach with a deep and booming chorus.  Sampson and Jim lay upon the porch, unleashed.  The other hounds were chained separately in the aspen grove a few rods distant.  Sampson thumped the boards with his big tail, but he did not get up, which laziness attested to the fact that there had been a lion chase the day before and he was weary and stiff.  If Wade had been at home he would have come out to see what had occasioned the clamor.  As Columbine rode by she saw another fresh lion-pelt pegged upon the wall of the cabin.

She followed the brook.  It had cleared since the rains and was shining and sparkling in the rough, swift places, and limpid and green in the eddies.  She passed the dam made by the solitary beaver that inhabited the valley.  Freshly cut willows showed how the beaver was preparing for the long winter ahead.  Columbine remembered then how greatly pleased Wade had been to learn about this old beaver; and more than once Wade had talked about trapping some younger beavers and bringing them there to make company for the old fellow.

The trail led across the brook at a wide, shallow place, where the splashing made by Pronto sent the trout scurrying for deeper water.  Columbine kept to that trail, knowing that it led up into Sage Valley, where Wilson Moore had taken up the homestead property.  Fresh horse tracks told her that Wade had ridden along there some time earlier.  Pronto shied at the whirring of sage-hens.  Presently Columbine ascertained they were flushed by the hound Kane, that had broken loose and followed her.  He had done so before, and the fact had not displeased her.

“Kane!  Kane! come here!” she called.  He came readily, but halted a rod or so away, and made an attempt at wagging his tail, a function evidently somewhat difficult for him.  When she resumed trotting he followed her.

Old White Slides had lost all but the drabs and dull yellows and greens, and of course those pale, light slopes that had given the mountain its name.  Sage Valley was only one of the valleys at its base.  It opened out half a mile wide, dominated by the looming peak, and bordered on the far side by an aspen-thicketed slope.  The brook babbled along under the edge of this thicket.  Cattle and horses grazed here and there on the rich, grassy levels, Columbine was surprised to see so many cattle and wondered to whom they belonged.  All of Belllounds’s stock had been driven lower down for the winter.  There among the several horses that whistled at her approach she espied the white mustang Belllounds had given to Moore.  It thrilled her to see him.  And next, she suffered a pang to think that perhaps his owner might never ride him again.  But Columbine held her emotions in abeyance.