Sunset after sunset she had dragged herself back to the ranch, sullen and sick and beaten.

Yet she never ceased to struggle.
The July storms came, and the forest floor that had been so sear and brown and dry and dusty changed as if by magic.

The green grass shot up, the flowers bloomed, and along the canyon beds of lacy ferns swayed in the wind and bent their graceful tips over the amber-colored water.
Ellen haunted these cool dells, these pine-shaded, mossy-rocked ravines where the brooks tinkled and the deer came down to drink.

She wandered alone.

But there grew to be company in the aspens and the music of the little waterfalls.