About the middle of the next afternoon Lee Bryant was riding southward from camp on the main mesa trail.

The road was difficult and his horse Dick made slow time along the snowy path broken by wagons through the drifts, but the rider let the animal choose his own gait, as he had done that hot July day when coming up from the south to buy the Perro Creek ranch.

On reaching the ford Lee pulled rein.

How different now the creek from on that burning afternoon of his encounter with Ruth Gardner and Imogene Martin! Snow covered its bed; the sands where he had knelt, the little pool, the foot-prints, lay hidden from sight.
How much had happened since! And how different was his life! He had suffered much and learned much since that hour of meeting; and he should never henceforth view this spot without a little feeling of melancholy.

The youth and two girls who drank there at the rill were no more: they had become other persons.
Presently he dismissed thoughts of this and set Dick wading across the ford.