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T was one of the noisest places in all California. They called it Sierra Springs, and it stood on a bench half way up Eight-Dollar Mountain. The noise came from the brawling, sprawling Wild River, that made much ado about very little down there below the bench. It also came from the winds that would be blowing harshly at all hours through the pines and from the sawmill where the saws screamed through the big logs and where planks and slabs were always falling with heavy thumps and thuds.

But Martha Capp liked the noises. She liked the sawmill, too, and most of all she liked the flume. She loved to see the lumber from the mill shoot by her down the long waterway as she sat on the bank. The flume ran to the railroad at Red CaHon, twenty miles away. From the flume she would look up to the great peaks upon which the tall, dark pines were roughly etched.

Sometimes Martha had a companion there by the waterway, Serena Hazlitt, a girl with magnificent red hair that hung in two great braids down her back, looking, as Martha had said to her mother, "like two big sticks of molasses candy." Serena had the soft complexion and the kind of blue eyes that go with auburn hair. Martha's hair was jet black and her skin and eyes were dark. The two girls were in the same class at school, and while they were always friendly enough, they often found themselves in positions of rivalry. Martha had "spelled down" Serena on three occasions when they were the last of the line to remain standing. But Serena had been chosen Fairy Queen at the church festival, much to the chagrin of the Capp family, who had confidently counted upon Martha getting the most votes. Then, too, Serena's buckskin was just a little faster than Martha's white pony.