stairway of shadow to the great spectacle of the day--the day's departure
from the hills.

The canon has its companion rivulet always coming down to meet the
stage-road going up. As this road is the only outlet hillward for all the
life of the plain, and as the tendency of every valley population is to
climb, one thinks of it as a way out rather than a way in. Higher up, the
stage-road becomes a pass cut through a wall of splintered cliffs; and
here it leads its companion, the brook, a wild dance over boulders, and
under culverts of fallen rock. At last it emerges on what is called The
Summit; and between are green, deep valleys where the little ranches,
fields and fences and houses, seem to have slid down to the bottom and lie
there at rest.

A party of young riders from the post had gone up this road one evening,
and two had come down, laughing and talking; but the other two remained in
the circle of light that rested on the summit. Prom where they sat in the
dry grass they could hear a hollow sound of moving feet as the cattle
wandered down through folds of the hills, seeking the willow copses by the
water. On the breast of her habit Moya wore the blossoms of the wild
evening primrose, which in this region flowers till the coming of frost.
They had been gathered for her on the way up, and as she had waited for
them, sitting her horse in silence, the brown owls gurgled and hooted
overhead from nest to nest in the crannies of the rocks.

"You need not hold the horses," she commanded, in her fresh voice. "Throw
my bridle over your saddle pommel and yours over mine.--There!" she said,
watching the horses as they shuffled about interlinked. "That is like half
the marriages in this world. They don't separate and they don't go astray,
but they don't _get_ anywhere!"