The two men proceeded along the precipice trail of the Pass. The shouting river below boisterous from the full flood of noon-day thaw began to hush. By the shadows, the Ranger knew that the afternoon was waning. The echoes from the shot still rocked in sharp crepitating knocks as of stone against stone, fainter and fading. Then a quiver of wind met their faces. The chasm opened to the fore like a gate, or a notch in the serrated ridge of the sky-line; and the precipice trail dropped over the edge of the crag to the scooped hollow of a slope where rock slide or avalanche had plowed a groove in the bevelled masonry of the precipice.

"This is the place," indicated Wayland.

From the shoulder of the higher slope came a little narrow indurated trail scarcely a hand's width, marked by the cleft foot-prints of a mountain goat. Where the path came down to the main trail of the Pass, jutted a huge rock left high and dry on its slide to the bottom of the gorge.

"Keep behind the other side of that, sir! They can't possibly see you."

"How do you know that trail comes from the Ridge gully? Looks to me like a goat track."

"Because I built it! You can see the N. F. trail sign—one notch and one blaze on that scrub juniper. Up on the Mesas, we were off the Forests. Here, we are back on them. You may not know it, sir; but this canyon is part of the region Moyese wants withdrawn for homesteads. You could homestead a reservoir for Smelter City here—pay a German or a Swede three-hundred to sit on this site—then sell for a couple of million to the Smelter City gang. They would get the suckers in the East to buy the bonds to pay for it. A fellow in the Sierras located a hundred water power sites that way."

The old Britisher was not following the Ranger's reasoning in the least.

"Then, if we are really on the National Forests, that is your territory, and we have the legal right to make an arrest?"

Wayland laughed outright. If you don't see why, then you do not know the stickling of a Briton's sense of law and a Scotchman's conscience. Matthews took up his station behind the rock that abutted on the trail.

He saw the Ranger hasten back along the face of the precipice, stop where the rock offered foothold and begin slowly climbing almost vertically. At first, it was going up the tiers of a broken stone stair. Then, the weathered ledge gave place to slant shale. He saw Wayland dig his heels for grip, grasp a sharp edge overhead, and hoist himself to the overhanging branch of a recumbent pine; then, scramble along the fallen trunk to a ledge barely wide enough for footing. Along this, he cautiously worked, face in, hand over hand from rock block to rock block, sticking fingers among the mossed crevices, fumbling the pebbles from the slate edges, and so round out of sight behind a flying buttress of masonry and back in view again a tier higher.

Just once, the watcher felt a tremor for the rash climber. Wayland's head was on a level with the crest of another ledge, his face to the rock, his left hand gripping a shoot of mountain laurel, his right groping the upper rocks. The old man saw the shrub jerk loose, moss, roots and all—he held his breath for the coming crash—it was all over. Wayland's left arm flung out to ward off the spatter of small stones; then, the right arm had clutched the spindly bole of a creeping juniper—his body lurched out, hung, swayed, lifted; and the Ranger disappeared among the shrubbery of the upper trail.

The old man took a deep breath.

"And this is the Man on the Job," he said. He drew behind his shelter and waited. "The same breed o' men after all, in different harness."

He had not noticed before, but there, ahead, where the black chasm of the Pass opened portals to the sunny blue of another valley, lay a lake, the Lake Behind the Peak, spangled with light, marbled like onyx or malachite, with the sheen of a jewel. Almost at his feet below, the near end of it lay. He could have tossed a pebble into it, seven-thousand feet below, where the white foaming river came ramping through a great pile of moraine that dammed up this end of the Pass to the width of a bridle trail. The outlaws would have to cross the lake to escape from the Pass; and almost, he thought, he saw the old punt at the far end, which Wayland had said hunters sometimes used.

The white butterflies flitted past his hiding place out to the light of the sun. The eagle was soaring strong-winged, swerving and lifting and falling in an insolence of languid power. The silent Pass quivered to the throb of waters. But what was doing with the Ranger? Not a sound came from the upper trail but the tinkle of hidden springs down the rocks. He knew if he uttered a shout, the echo would take up his call. An hour passed: two hours. Ghost shadows came creeping into the canyon. The butterflies had fluttered out to the blue portal where the rocks opened doors to the sun. The rampant roar of the river was quieting to the hollow hush. The old man rose, walked along the precipice, came back to his shelter, sat, stood up, examined the rifle, looked ahead where the horses had wandered on, fidgeted, and bemoaned the years that prevented pursuit up the rock face. He knew by the light and the hush that it must be almost five o 'clock.

And at five o'clock in the ranch house back in the Valley, Eleanor was lying in her room with her face buried in Wayland's note, praying as only the young pray, with the worst and the best of their nature in the prayer; for where such love comes, all goes into the incense of the fire that goes up from the altar—the best and the worst of the inmost heart: an apotheosis of "give-me" and an utter abandonment of "let-me-give." By and by, when we grow older, we leave both the "give me" and the "let-me-give" to God.

The old man knew it must be almost six o'clock; for the light came aslant the gap and the chill of the upper snow crept down from the mountain. A pretty business this, it seemed to him: twenty miles back of beyond; horses sent on at random ahead; a gang of murderers in hiding above—Matthews walked boldly along the precipice trail, saw the eagle below circling, still circling; heard a hawk skirr and scold from a dead branch—Then, he deliberately pointed his voice to the rock wall of the echo across the gorge and let out a yell that split the welkin—A thousand—ten thousand—multitudinous eldritch laughing echoes came jibbering and mumbling and giggling and shrilling back from the rock, filling the Pass with chattering, knocking sounds that skipped from stone to stone.

Instantly, a shot, a shout, a bang, the rocking crash of echoes—mixed with ear-splitting, rocketting shots—a crunch of feet—the old man dashed to the hiding of his crag. A spurt of gravel mid showers of dust and snorting of horses—Not on the trail at all but almost over his back, slithered and slid and bunched horses and men, pell mell, the white horse leading the way braced back on its haunches, the fellow in the yellow slicker rumbling a volcano of lurid curses—The outlaws had not followed the goat track at all but jumped sheer from the higher slope to the Pass trail.

Shouting "Stop!—Stop!—I command you in the name of the State to stop—!" the old man sprang to the middle of the trail flourishing the rifle above his head.

"State be damned," yelled the fellow in the oil-skin slicker. Never pausing, turning only to shoot at wild random, the outlaws had tumbled—stumbled—slid down the slatey slope for the lake.

There was the pound—pound—the huffing of saddle leather—and a horse came spurring along the Pass trail at reckless gallop. The old man flung himself athwart—a rider in sheep-skin leggings, hat far back, came round the rock at break neck pace looking over his shoulder as if pursued—One jump—the old frontiersman had the horse's bridle! The shock threw the beast's hind legs clear over the edge jarring the rider almost to the animal's neck. Next—the old man was looking down the barrel of the outlaw's big repeater—With a mighty swing, Matthews clubbed his rifle on the other's wrist. He might have scruples as to law and conscience; but he knew how and when and where to hit, did the Briton with the Scotch-Canadian blood. Also he knew when to let go—There was a flash—the rock splintering crash of echo, the whinnying scream and leap of the horse shot by the falling weapon—Rider and beast hurtled backwards, the man's foot caught to one stirrup—There was the crackling of slate and shale—the gash and rasp and wrench of loosening rock masses sliding—down—down—down and yet down, with knocking echoes; with laughter of terrified scream from the echo rock across the gorge—pound and plunge from ledge to ledge—the horse's body turning twice as it struck and bounced out—a cloud of dust—the shout, the blasphemy, the cry of rage, then the shrill scream of death terror that echoed and echoed—The old man looked down! There was a pounding of the stones—a faint far rebound and the darkness below swallowed over a fading swirl at the bottom of the canyon. He heard, he thought, he heard the engulfing gurgle of the waters, while the shrill scream still jibbered and faded along the echo ledge.

"By violence ye lived—by violence ye die—over the precipice ye go as ye sent the mangled boy to the bloody death!"

Then the Ranger was tumbling down the goat track in a slither of shale.

"Come on—that was well done, sir! Wish we'd sent them all over to the very bottom of Hell—! I'd stalked that fellow apart from the others when you signaled—come on—we'll catch the rest at the lake—there's a fellow wounded—you must have nipped one when you shot this morning—join me at the lake," and leaving Matthews to follow by the foot trail, the delirious Ranger went tearing exultant down the stone slide. Water-muffled shots sounded from the lake. Wayland paused in his head-long descent. The five outlaws were shoving the punt from the shore with the bronchos swimming in tow. The stolen wagon horses, lay shot on the shore. One of the outlaws was being supported by the others. It was the man in the yellow slicker.

A great wave went over Wayland of something he had never before known. It pounded at his temples. It set his heart going in a force pump. It blew his lungs out, and set the whip cord muscles itching to go—to go—he wanted to shout with joy of power—power that pursued and caught and crushed—and trembled with overplus of intoxicated strength—He knew if he could lay his hand on Crime at that moment he could crush the life out of the thing's throat; and there was a parchedness that was not thirst, a tingling to clinch that Criminal Thing menacing the Nation, to clinch and strangle it to a death not honored in the code of white-corpuscled anaemic study-chair reformers.

"Well," he said, as the other came limping down to the shore, "I didn't think there could be enough of the savage in me to enjoy a manhunt."

The old Briton looked queerly at the young fellow.

"A'm beginnin'—," he said slowly, "A'm beginnin' to understand y'r lynch law in this country—an' the why."

"What do you make of it?" asked Wayland, too excited to notice the other's abstraction.

"A'm beginnin' to understand if y' monkey with the law much longer in this land, the whole Nation will go locoed like you, Wayland—with a blood thirst for righteousness—a white passion for the square deal—an' God pity—that day!"

The fugitives had reached the far shore of the lake, landed and were riding off when a second thought seemed to bring one man back to the water's edge. He stooped, heaved up a rock, threw it through the bottom of the old punt.

"You'll have to do better than that to keep me from crossing," said
Wayland.

The fellow was aiming his rifle. Wayland and Matthews jumped behind the big hemlocks.

"He's fulling a skin bag wi' water."

"Then, they intend to cross the Desert," inferred Wayland; "but they'll have to go farther to slip me."

One of the riders was scanning back with a field glass.

"Looking for number six—Of all the colossal effrontery—they are actually going to speak."

The fellow nearest shore lowered his rifle and trumpeted both hands.

"Speak louder—can't hear ye." Matthews had gone to the edge of the lake. The answer came faint and muffled.

"Where's—our—pardner—?"

"Hold up y'r hands—all five," roared back Matthews.

The arms of all but the hurt man went above heads, hands facing.

"Y'll find y'r man's carcass in the bloody mess where ye sent the sheep—! d' y'—see yon eagle?—'Tis pickin' his bones—" roared Matthews through funnelled palms; and both jumped back to the shelter of the hemlocks. The outlaws drew together to confer.

"They don't believe us," said Wayland. "They'll camp in the timber over there for the night and wait. All right, my friends! You'll not have to wait long; no longer than it takes you, sir, to find our pack mule and the stray bronchs, while I build a raft. We can't cross the lower end for the moraine; and we can't cross the upper end for the ice; and it's too cold to risk swimming."

Matthews had headed the horses and pack mule back from an open glade and hobbled their fore feet. Then Wayland began chopping down small trees. They saw the figures of the outlaws against the twilight of the gap ride away from the far margin of the lake. Then only did the Ranger build a little fire behind the biggest hemlocks, an Indian's tiny chip fire, not "the big white-man's blaze." On this, they cooked their supper, lake trout hauled out while they waited, and flap jacks, with a tin plate for a frying pan.

"Anyway," said the Ranger wiping the smoke tears from his eyes, "the smoke keeps off the mosquitoes."

"Mosquitoes, pah! That shows y're Yale for all y'r good work this day!
A have no seen one yet."

Wayland's answer was to light his pipe. "It's either bear's grease, or smoke between bites," he laughed.

They had unsaddled horses and were sitting on a log watching the animals crop through the deep grasses.

The frontiersman uttered a sigh. "'Tis like a taste of the good old days, the days well nigh gone for ever; the smell of the bark fire; an' th' tang of the kinnikinick; an' the cinnamon cedars; and the air like champagne; an' the stars prickin' the crown o' the hoary old peaks like diamonds; an' the little waves lappin' an' lavin' an' whisperin' an' tellin' of the woman y' luve. An' care? Care, man? There wasna' a care heavier than dandelion down. 'Twas sleep like a deep drink, an' up an' away in the mornin', chasin' a young man's hopes to the end o' the Trail! A suppose th' Almighty meant t' anchor men, or He wouldna' permit the buildin' of toons! Once A was in New York! A did na' see but one patch o' sunlight twenty stories overhead! Th' car things screeched an' rulled an' the folks—the wimmen wi' awfu' stern wheeler hats, an' the men—hurryin'—hurryin'!—Wayland, d' they get it? There's only twenty-four hours in a day—they can't catch any more by hurryin'—what are they hurryin' for? Do they get it—what they're hurryin' for? Do they get anywhere? D' they sit down joyous at night? A heard some laugh—It was not joyous! Do they get anything down there in the awfu' heat?"

Wayland laughed. "I don't know," he said. "Care isn't light as dandelion fluff! I'll bet on that."

The roar of waters below the moraine softened and quieted. There was a chorus of little waves lipping and whispering among the reeds. A whole aeon of resinous sunbeams breathed their essence through the dark from the spicy evergreens. One need not attempt to guess of what Wayland was thinking. He had forgotten his companion's presence till the old man spoke.

"A suppose, Wayland, you are only one of an army of kiddie boys on the job out here?"

Wayland absently roused himself.

"Land Service and Reclamation men have tougher jobs and less glory. All we have to do is sit tight and it's a pretty good place to sit tight in—this out-door world. Different with the other fellows! They're hamstrung by the red tape of office, or blackguarded by some peanut politician who is scoring an opponent! There was Walker down at Durango, shot examining a coal fraud. He was a Land Office man; and his murderers have not even been punished. Then, there were the two chaps, who ran the rapids before the Gunnison Tunnel could be built; though that's been exaggerated with a lot of magazine hog-wash to make a fellow sick! Biggest job there was the engineer's work. Do you know he drove that six mile tunnel from both ends and, when the two ends met, they were not two inches off? Hog-wash and dish-water hacks spread themselves in the magazines all over those chaps running the rapids! You've run ten times worse rapids, yourself, on Saskatchewan and MacKenzie hundreds of times. Yet those chaps—not one of them—noted the wonder of a tunnel driven from both ends coming out exactly even. Why, the poor ignorant foreign workmen cried when they met from both ends, got hold of one fellow's wrist through the mud wall and pulled him through bodily, cried like kids at the victory of it! Your town hack didn't know what it meant to be a sand hog under ground for years and come through to daylight like that. The ignorant foreigner knew. I guess a good dozen of 'em had sacrificed their lives to the work. They knew the quiet engineer fellow had conquered the earth; and that fellow doesn't get the salary of a Wall Street stenographer—a way Uncle Sam has. They'd give such a man a title and a fifty thousand a year pension in England or Germany.

"Then, there was Fessenden, unearthed a lot of fraud in Oregon and got himself crucified—got the bounce; had broken his health in that sort of thing; got fired because he proved up that some smug politicians had caused the death of an old couple by jumping their homestead claim and driving them to penury. Then, there was Carrington. He was on the Desert Reclamation Project; took his bride in on their honeymoon; hundreds of miles from the railroad. She was delicate—lungs; poor fellow thought perhaps camp life would cure her. She died there in the heat. Two or three of the men gave up their jobs to help bring the body out." Wayland land paused, lost in thought. "They got the body out all right; but, the horror of it, Carrington went off his head! Know an engineering chap tramped the Sierras for a hundred miles dogged by a spotter from one of the railroads—but what's the use of talking about it? These things have to be done; and these are the men on the job."

"The Men on the Job," slowly repeated Matthews, "the men we make earls and premiers of in Britain; but who of your big public cares one jot? Time you wakened up as a Nation."

"You are using almost the same words as Moyese. He says the public doesn't care a damn, wouldn't raise a hand to stand for the rights of one of us, pays us less than dagoes earn. I guess Moyese doesn't understand our point of view, can't take in why we keep at it."

The wind came through the trees a phantom harper. The little waves lapped and whispered. The pine needles clicked pixy castanets; and the moon beams sifted through the trees a silver dust.

"Why do you? Why do you keep on the job?" asked the old man.

"Hanged if I know," answered Wayland uncomfortably.

"A saw a man on the job to-day risk his life twice and think no more about it than if he had been out for a walk. If a man in England, if a man in Germany, if a man in Italy, yes by thunder, Wayland, if a man on the job in pagan Turkey had done what you did to-day, he'd be given a V. C. accordin' to the Turk, and a title and a pension for life."

"I don't despair of a cross myself, when Moyese hears what happened to-day. It'll be a double cross with a G. B.; but, speaking of cross, as we have to cross the lake, don't you think you'd better snatch a little sleep?"

And so the two men, one representing the chivalry of the old West, the other the chivalry of the new, stretched out to sleep with coats for pillows, while the flood-waters went singing through the stones, and the little waves came lipping and whispering, and the low boom of the snow slides rolled through the chambered hollows of canyon and gorge. Absurd, wasn't it, but the Ranger was not dreaming about the bevelling trowel of the titan mountain gods? He went to sleep dreaming of the star visible from the other side of the Holy Cross, dreaming dreams that men and women have dreamed since time began; of drinking, drinking, and drinking yet again, of life and love and blessedness from the fount of human lips; of the seal that should be the seal to service, not to self; of the gates ajar to a new life like the notch of sky where the rocks of the Pass opened portals to the blue valley. Would he have dreamed less joyously if he had known that the portals of the Pass led to the avalanche and the desert and the alkali death? Who shall say that love did not pay the toll? And in him rioted the savagery of the fighter who wanted to seize his foe by the throat.