Page:Honore Willsie--Judith of the godless valley.djvu/16

 most crystalline deep sapphire, and Lost Chief Valley, high perched in the ranges, silently awaiting the return of spring.

Fire Mesa, huge, profoundly striated, with red clouds forever forming on its top and rolling over remoter mesas, stood with its greatest length across the north end of the valley. At its feet lay Black Gorge, and half-way up its steep red front projected the wide ledge on which the schoolhouse stood. Dead Line Peak and Falkner's Peak abruptly closed the south end of the valley. From between these two great mountains, Lost Chief Creek swept down across the valley into the Black Gorge. Lost Chief Range formed the west boundary of the valley, Indian Range, the east. They were perhaps ten miles apart.

All this gives little of the picture Douglas might have been absorbing. It tells nothing of the azure hue of the snow that buried Lost Chief Creek and Lost Chief ranches. It gives no hint of the awful splendor of Dead Line and Falkner's Peaks, all blue and bronze and crimson, backed by myriads of other peaks, pure white, against the perfect sky.

It does not picture the brilliant yellow canyon wall which thrust Lost Chief Range back from the valley, nor the peacock blue sides of the Indian Range, clothed in wonder by the Forest Reserve. And finally, it does not tell of the infinite silence that lay this prismatic Sunday afternoon over the snow-cloaked world.

Douglas did not see the beauty of the valley, but as, far below, he saw Judith trot up to the Day's corral, he was smitten suddenly by his sense of loneliness. Too bad of Jude, he thought, always to be flying off at a tangent like that! A guy couldn't offer the least