Page:Honore Willsie--Judith of the godless valley.djvu/314

 would refuse to undertake. Yet, he did not believe that Judith would attempt such a journey without carefully outfitting. And where could she have done this? Had she foreseen her flight and cached food and fodder? Douglas shrugged this suggestion aside as highly improbable. But she could have gone into Mormon Valley for supplies. It was possible to reach Black Devil Pass from the upper end of Mormon Valley, possible in summer at least. Possible also to reach the Pass by swinging around to the right of the Blade Devil Range.

Douglas, with a grim tightening of his lips, looked over his supplies. Bacon, coffee, flour, matches; enough for a week if eked out by cottontails and porcupines. But the horses had only a day's fodder. He remade the pack, mounted and pushed on through the snows, which grew deeper as the elevation increased.

On either hand, the two ranges flung mountain beyond mountain, in shades of jade, creviced by deep blue snow. The tiny, weary cavalcade wound on and on with not a trace of Judith to lighten the way. It was noon when Douglas reached the forest which choked the end of Mormon Valley. He knew the spot. Nature first had covered the floor of the passage with boulders. Between the boulders, she had planted the pine-trees. The pine had grown thick and tall and had waxed old and fallen, and other pines had grown above the dead tree-trunks. In summer, if extreme care and patience were used, a horse could be led through this chaos. In winter, deep-blanketed with snow—!

Douglas drew up before the pines and dismounted. The snow was waist-deep. Very slowly, he began to pick a winding, intricate path between the trees. He fell many times but he finally emerged into the smoother floor of the valley. Then he turned and followed his