I. THE TWO SPRINGS High above Sierra's peaks stands grim Mount Tallac.

Oh, he knew that smell; fireall Sierra's woods ablazecould not disguise the hunter who had shot at him from the platform, and, though he did not know this, the hunter really who had followed him all day, and who had tried to smoke him out of his den and thereby set the woods ablaze.

The river, born in high Sierra's flank, that lived and rolled and grew, through mountain pines, o'erleaping man-made barriers, then to reach with growing power the plains and bring its mighty flood at last to the Bay of Bays, a prisoner there to lie, the prisoner of the Golden Gate, seeking forever Freedom's Blue, seeking and ragingraging and seekingback and forth, foreverin vain.

And far beyond, like clouds upon the border of the sky, towered minarets of white, where the Sierra's eternal snows flashed austerely the blazes of the sun.