“Eh?  What’s that?” cried Matthews; and when he looked to the back seat Eleanor and the little gray haired lady in plain back mourning bonnet were going on as fool-women will, and Williams was risking a fall out leaning over the seat shaking hands with Wayland.  Somebody was flourishing a red cotton handkerchief; two for ten cents, they sell them in Smelter City.  It was Williams who put a check to what Eleanor called a ‘loadful of idiots.’  “The wind is blowing towards the snow,” he said; “but I don’t like that column of smoke rising from the Homestead slope in this high gale.  That Irish sot went home roaring drunk by the stage yesterday.  What will you bet the fire didn’t start in the timber slash?”

Wayland gave only one look.  “It isn’t my job any more,” he said, “but I can’t stand seeing that.”

He was off at a gallop.  They saw the sparks strike from the stones as he turned up the Ridge Trail.

A week had passed.  The fire had been put out with little damage except from O’Finnigan’s timber slash to the lake beneath the upper snows.  A new Ranger was in charge.  As for O’Finnigan, like Calamity, he had dropped as completely from the Valley’s knowledge as if the earth had swallowed him.  The Valley, in fact, had given small thought to the mad squaw or the drunken Irishman.  The Valley had had other things to talk about.  There was the coming fall campaign, and Wayland’s name as reform candidate, and Wayland’s quiet marriage to the daughter of the dead sheep king.  Eleanor and Wayland had gone round through the Pass to the Lake Behind the Peak, where he had dreamed what form of triangulation thoughts must take from the star in the water to the star on the other side of the Holy Cross; where the little waves lipped and lisped and laved the reeds; where they two could drink and drink unseen of the joy of the waters of life before the opening of the political battle.

“Make him tell y’ of all that happened in th’ Pass when A was with him,” Matthews had called as they rode away up the narrowing trail to the jubilant shouting of the canyon waters, the little mule leading the pack ponies.

Mrs. Williams stood on the upper piazza of the Mission School waving and waving.  The cottonwoods were raining down showers of gold; and the pines were clicking their gypsy tambourines; and the golden torches of countless yellow autumn flowers lighted the triumphal procession of the year to its consummation.  Against the opal crown of the Holy Cross Mountain, the yellowed larches tossed flaming torches to the very sky.

“They seem to be riding away to a world of dreams,” said the little lady in black.

Mr. Bat Brydges and Senator Moyese walked slowly and reflectively past the Range Cabin towards the charred burn and timber slash of O’Finnigan’s abandoned homestead.

“It’s that damned rant the old fellow let off in the court room,” said Brydges.