Bare, yellow, cedar-dotted slopes, apparently level, so gradual was the ascent, stretched away to a dense ragged line of forest that rose black over range after range, at last to fail near the bare summit of a magnificent mountain, sunrise-flushed against the blue sky.
"Oh, beautiful!" cried Bo. "But they ought to be called Black Mountains."
"Old Baldy, there, is white half the year," replied Dale.
"Look back an' see what you say," suggested Roy.
The girls turned to gaze silently. Helen imagined she looked down upon the whole wide world. How vastly different was the desert! Verily it yawned away from her, red and gold near at hand, growing softly flushed with purple far away, a barren void, borderless and immense, where dark-green patches and black lines and upheaved ridges only served to emphasize distance and space.
"See thet little green spot," said Roy, pointing. "Thet's Snowdrop. An' the other one--'way to the right--thet's Show Down."
"Where is Pine?" queried Helen, eagerly.
"Farther still, up over the foot-hills at the edge of the woods."
"Then we're riding away from it."
"Yes. If we'd gone straight for Pine thet gang could overtake us. Pine is four days' ride. An' by takin' to the mountains Milt can hide his tracks. An' when he's thrown Anson off the scent, then he'll circle down to Pine."
"Mr. Dale, do you think you'll get us there safely--and soon?" asked Helen, wistfully.
"I won't promise soon, but I promise safe. An' I don't like bein' called Mister," he replied.
"Are we ever going to eat?" inquired Bo, demurely.
At this query Roy Beeman turned with a laugh to look at Bo. Helen saw his face fully in the light, and it was thin and hard, darkly bronzed, with eyes like those of a hawk, and with square chin and lean jaws showing scant, light beard.
"We shore are," he replied. "Soon as we reach the timber. Thet won't be long."
"Reckon we can rustle some an' then take a good rest," said Dale, and he urged his horse into a jog-trot.
During a steady trot for a long hour, Helen's roving eyes were everywhere, taking note of the things from near to far--the scant sage that soon gave place to as scanty a grass, and the dark blots that proved to be dwarf cedars, and the ravines opening out as if by magic from what had appeared level ground, to wind away widening between gray stone walls, and farther on, patches of lonely pine-trees, two and three together, and then a straggling clump of yellow aspens, and up beyond the fringed border of forest, growing nearer all the while, the black sweeping benches rising to the noble dome of the dominant mountain of the range.