The cabin stood high upon a level terrace, with clusters of aspens behind it, and was sheltered from winter blasts by a gray cliff, picturesque and crumbling, with its face overgrown by creeping vines and colorful shrubs, Wilson Moore could not have chosen a more secluded and beautiful valley for his homesteading adventure.  The little gray cabin, with smoke curling from the stone chimney, had lost its look of dilapidation and disuse, yet there was nothing new that Columbine could see.  The last quarter of the ascent of the slope, and the few rods across the level terrace, seemed extraordinarily long to Columbine.  As she dismounted and tied Pronto her heart was beating and her breath was coming fast.

The door of the cabin was open.  Kane trotted past the hesitating Columbine and went in.

“You son-of-a-hound-dog!” came to Columbine’s listening ears in Wade’s well-known voice.  “I’ll have to beat you—­sure as you’re born.”

“I heard a horse,” came in a lower voice, that was Wilson’s.

“Darn me if I’m not gettin’ deafer every day,” was the reply.

Then Wade appeared in the doorway.

“It’s nobody but Miss Collie,” he announced, as he made way for her to enter.

“Good morning!” said Columbine, in a voice that had more than cheerfulness in it.

“Collie!...  Did you come to see me?”

She heard this incredulous query just an instant before she saw Wilson at the far end of the room, lying under the light of a window.  The inside of the cabin seemed vague and unfamiliar.

“I surely did,” she replied, advancing.  “How are you?”

“Oh, I’m all right.  Tickled to death, right now.  Only, I hate to have you see this battered mug of mine.”

“You needn’t—­care,” said Columbine, unsteadily.  And indeed, in that first glance she did not see him clearly.  A mist blurred her sight and there was a lump in her throat.  Then, to recover herself, she looked around the cabin.

“Well—­Wils Moore—­if this isn’t fine!” she ejaculated, in amaze and delight.  Columbine sustained an absolute surprise.  A magic hand had transformed the interior of that rude old prospector’s abode.  A carpenter and a mason and a decorator had been wonderfully at work.  From one end to the other Columbine gazed; from the big window under which Wilson lay on a blanketed couch to the open fireplace where Wade grinned she looked and looked, and then up to the clean, aspen-poled roof and down to the floor, carpeted with deer hides.  The chinks between the logs of the walls were plastered with red clay; the dust and dirt were gone; the place smelled like sage and wood-smoke and fragrant, frying meat.  Indeed, there were a glowing bed of embers and a steaming kettle and a smoking pot; and the way the smoke and steam curled up into the gray old chimney attested to its splendid draught.  In each corner hung a deer-head, from the antlers of which depended accoutrements of a cowboy—­spurs, ropes, belts, scarfs, guns.  One corner contained cupboard, ceiling high, with new, clean doors of wood, neatly made; and next to it stood a table, just as new.  On the blank wall beyond that were pegs holding saddles, bridles, blankets, clothes.