Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. Eleven thousand feet above sea-level the dry air reaches the point of saturation with a kind of gasp and shiver. Philip Deed was sure of the storm in the air half an hour before the clouds began to gather. It was the day on which he was to meet his father at Maverick; and he had set forth in the morning from Piflon, where he had spent his unprofitable year in mining, planning to reach Bayles's Park by one o'clock, and to take the railway there for Maverick, where he expected to arrive in time for the wedding. Cutter, who also had failed in the mountains, and whose arrangements for the future were indefinite, was going to the wedding with Philip. His family had always known the Deeds in New York, and he and Philip were friends. The air grew moist, and the sky darkened as they put their horses at the ascent out of Laughing Valley, into which they had just come down from the other side. A mile up the trail they stopped on an eminence command- iug the valley, to look about. A ray of sunshine shot a half-hearted glance from behind the clouds brooding above the way they were to take. The ray was instantly swallowed up; but the valley was swept by a momentary radiance, under which it started dazzliugly fresh and green, and took the sudden gold on its face with a dancing quiver which almost excused its foolish name. The range of hills over which they had just come rose behind Laughing Valley City to the north. To the south the exit from the valley was through Red Rock Cation, between the narrow walls of which the Chepita fled roaring. The sound reached them where they stood on their height at the edge of the caflon, above the scattered noises of the town, which at this hour (just before the three- o'clock shift at the mines) was as peaceful, and almost as noiseless, as if it...