a beacon.

The air was cold with a nip of frost. From far on the other side of the
ridge she had descended came the bawls of the last straggling cattle of
the round-up. But surely Pronto had not shot up his ears for them. As if
in answer a wild sound pealed down the slope, making the mustang jump.
Columbine had heard it before.

"Pronto, it's only a wolf," she soothed him.

The peal was loud, rather harsh at first, then softened to a mourn,
wild, lonely, haunting. A pack of coyotes barked in angry answer, a
sharp, staccato, yelping chorus, the more piercing notes biting on the
cold night air. These mountain mourns and yelps were music to Columbine.
She rode on down the trail in the gathering darkness, less afraid of the
night and its wild denizens than of what awaited her at White
Slides Ranch.



CHAPTER II

Darkness settled down like a black mantle over the valley. Columbine
rather hoped to find Wilson waiting to take care of her horse, as used
to be his habit, but she was disappointed. No light showed from the
cabin in which the cowboys lived; he had not yet come in from the
round-up. She unsaddled, and turned Pronto loose in the pasture.

The windows of the long, low ranch-house were bright squares in the
blackness, sending cheerful rays afar. Columbine wondered in trepidation