Down the valley they rode, trotting, walking, galloping, till, turning westward, they mounted a sharp slope and came up above the plain. Below, in the heart of the long, narrow valley, the river coiled and wandered, divided and came together again into a swift stream, amongst aspen islands and willow swamps. Beyond this strange, lonely river-bed, the cottonwoods began, and, above them, the pine forests massed themselves and strode up the foothills of the gigantic range, that range of iron rocks, sharp, thin, and brittle where they scraped the sky.

At the top of the hill, Pierre put out his hand and pulled Joan’s rein, drawing her to a stop beside him.

“Over yonder’s my ranch,” said he.

Joan looked. There was not a sign of house or clearing, but she followed his gesture and nodded.

“Under the mountains?” she said.

“At the foot of Thunder Cañon. You can see a gap in the pines. There’s a waterfall just above—that white streak. Now you’ve got it. Where you come from ’s to the south, away yonder.”

Joan would not turn her head. “Yes,” said she, “I know.”

Suddenly tears rushed to her eyes. She had a moment of unbearable longing and regret. Pierre said nothing; he was not watching her.

“Come on,” said he, “or your father will be takin’ after us.”

They rode at a gallop down the hill.

The period which followed had a quality of breathless, almost unearthly happiness. They were young, savage, simple, and their love, unanalyzed, was as joyous as the loves of animals: joyous with that clear gravity characteristic of the boy and girl. Pierre had been terribly alone before Joan came, and the building-up of his ranch had occupied his mind day and night except, now and again, for dreams. Yet he was of a passionate nature. Joan felt in him sometimes a savage possibility of violence. Two incidents of this time blazed themselves especially on her memory: the one, her father’s visit, the other, an irrelevant enough picture until after events threw back a glare upon it.

They had been at Pierre’s ranch for a fortnight before John Carver found them. Then, one morning, as Pierre opened the door to go out to work, Joan saw a thin, red pony tied to the fence and a small figure walking toward the cabin.

“Pierre, it’s Father!” she said. And Pierre stopped in his tracks, drew himself up and waited, hands on his cartridge belt.

How mean and old and furtive her father looked in contrast to this beautiful young husband! Joan was entirely unafraid. She leaned against the side of the door and watched, as silent and unconsulted as any squaw, while the two men settled their property rights in her.

“So you’ve took my gel,” said John Carver, stopping a foot or two in front of Pierre, his eyes shifting up and down, one long hand fingering his lips.

Pierre answered courteously. “Some man was bound to hev her, Mr. Carver, soon or late. You can’t set your face ag’in’ the laws of natur’. Will you be steppin’ in? Joan will give you some breakfast.”

Carver paid no heed to the invitation. “Hev you married her?” said he.

The blood rose to Pierre’s brown face. “Sure I hev.”

“Well, sir, you hev married the darter of a ——” Carver used a brutal word. “Look out fer her. If you see her eyes lookin’ an’ lookin’ at another man, you kin know what’s to come.” Pierre was white. “I’ve done with her. She kin never come to me fer bite or bed. Shoot her if you hev to, Pierre Landis, but when she’s kotched at her mother’s game, don’t send her back to me. That’s all I come to say.”

He turned with limber agility and went back to his horse. He was on it and off, galloping madly across the sagebrush flat. Pierre turned and walked into the house past Joan without a word.

She still leaned against the door, but her head was bent.

Presently she went about her housework. Every now and then she shot a wistful look at Pierre. All morning long, he sat there, his hands hanging between his knees, his eyes full of a brooding trouble. At noon he shook his head, got up, and, still without word or caress, he strode out and did not come back till dark. Joan suffered heartache and terror. When he came, she ran into his arms. He kissed her, seemed quite himself again, and the strange interview was never mentioned by either of them. They were silent people, given to feelings and to action rather than to thoughts and words.

The other memory was of a certain sunset hour when she came at Pierre’s call out to the shed he had built at one side of their cabin. Its open side faced the west, and, as Joan came, her shadow went before her and fell across Pierre at work. The flame of the west gave a weird pallor to the flames over which he bent. He was whistling, and hammering at a long piece of iron. Joan came and stood beside him.

Suddenly he straightened up and held in the air a bar of metal, the shaped end white hot. Joan blinked.

“That’s our brand, gel,” said Pierre. “Don’t you fergit it. When I’ve made my fortune there’ll be stock all over the country marked with them two bars. That’ll be famous—the Two-Bar Brand. Don’t you fergit it, Joan.”

And he brought the white iron close so that she felt its heat on her face and drew back, flinching. He laughed, let it fall, and kissed her. Joan was very glad and proud.

In the fall, when the whole country had turned to a great cup of gold, purple-rimmed under the sky, Pierre went out into the hills after his winter meat. Joan was left alone. She spent her time cleaning and arranging the two-room cabin, and tidying up outdoors, and in “grubbing sagebrush,” a gigantic task, for the one hundred and fifty acres of Pierre’s homestead were covered for the most part by the sturdy, spicy growth, and every bush had to be dug out and burnt to clear the way for ploughing and planting. Joan worked with the deliberateness and intentness of a man. She enjoyed the wholesome drudgery. She was proud every sundown of the little clearing she had made, and stood, tired and content, to watch the piled brush burn, sending up aromatic smoke and curious, dull flames very high into the still air.

She was so standing, hands folded on her rake, when, on the other side of her conflagration, she perceived a man. He was steadily regarding her, and when her eyes fell upon him, he smiled and stepped forward—a tall, broad, very fair young man in a shooting coat, khaki riding-breeches, and puttees. He had a wide brow, clear, blue eyes and an eager, sensitive, clean-shaven mouth and chin. He held out a big white hand.

“Mrs. Landis,” he said, in a crisp voice of an accent and finish strange to the girl “I wonder if you and your husband can put me up for the night. I’m Frank Holliwell. I’m on a round of parish visits, and, as my parish is about sixty miles square, my poor old pony has gone lame. I know you are not my parishioners, though, no doubt, you should be, but I’m going to lay claim to your hospitality, for all that, if I may?”

Joan had moved her rake into the grasp of her left hand and had taken the proffered palm into her other, all warm and fragrantly stained.

“You’re the new sin-buster, ain’t you?” she asked gravely.