No stop was made at noon to rest the laboring, sweating pack animals.
Under circumstances where pleasure might have been possible Ellen would have reveled in this hard ride into a wonderful forest ever thickening and darkening.

But the wild beauty of glade and the spruce slopes and the deep, bronze-walled canyons left her cold.

She saw and felt, but had no thrill, except now and then a thrill of alarm when Spades slid to his haunches down some steep, damp, piny declivity.
All the woodland, up and down, appeared to be richer greener as they traveled farther west.

Grass grew thick and heavy.

Water ran in all ravines.