NAMELESS RIVER
CHAPTER I
"FIGHT FOR A WOMAN? HELL! IF 'TWAS TH' HORSE NOW—"
IT was Springtime in the Deep Heart country. On the broad slopes, the towering slants of the hills themselves, the connifers snag their everlasting monotone, tuned by the little winds from the south.
On the flaring fringes of their sweeping skirts where the streams ran, maples trembled in the airy sun and cottonwoods shook their thousand palms of silver.
Great cañons cut the ridges, dark and mysterious, murmuring with snow water, painted fantastically in the reds and browns and yellows of their weathered stone. Pine trees grew here, and piñons, hemlock and spruce, all the dark and sombre people of the forest, majestic and aloof.
But in the sweet valleys that ran like playful fingers all ways among the hills, where lay tender grass of a laughing brightness, flowers nodded thick in the drowsy meadows. It was
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