Grass grew luxuriantly there in the open, but not under the trees, where the brown needle-mats jealously obstructed the green.

Clusters of columbines waved their graceful, sweet, pale-blue flowers that Wade felt a joy in seeing.

He loved flowers--columbines, the glory of Colorado, came first, and next the many-hued purple asters, and then the flaunting spikes of paint-brush, and after them the nameless and numberless wild flowers that decked the mountain meadows and colored the grass of the aspen groves and peeped out of the edge of snow fields.
"Strange how it seems good to live--when I look at a columbine--or watch a beaver at his work--or listen to the bugle of an elk!" mused Bent Wade.

He wondered why, with all his life behind him, he could still find comfort in these things.
Then he rode on his way.

The grassy valley, with its winding stream, slowly descended and widened, and left foothill and mountain far behind.
Far across a wide plain rose another range, black and bold against the blue.