hundreds of miles across the mountains.

There on the Big Horn Ranch through the long summer days together they
rode the ranges after the cattle, cooking their food in the open and
camping under the stars where night found them, care-free and deeply
happy, drinking long full draughts of that mingled wine of life into
which health and youth and love and God's sweet sun and air poured their
rare vintage. The world was far away and quite forgotten.

Summer deepened into autumn, the fall round-up was approaching, and
there came a September day of such limpid light and such nippy sprightly
air as to suggest to Mandy nothing less than a holiday.

"Let's strike!" she cried to her husband, as she looked out toward
the rolling hills and the overtopping peaks shining clear in the early
morning light. "Let's strike and go a-fishing."

Her husband let his eyes wander over the full curves of her strong and
supple body and rest upon the face, brown and wholesome, lit with her
deep blue eyes and crowned with the red-gold masses of her hair, and
exclaimed:

"You need a holiday, Mandy. I can see it in the drooping lines of your
figure, and in the paling of your cheeks. In short," moving toward her,
"you need some one to care for you."

"Not just at this moment, young man," she cried, darting round the
table. "But, come, what do you say to a day's fishing away up the Little
Horn?"