ntains before us changed
curiously. Of a broken chocolate-brown at noon, as the sun set their
eastern fronts assumed a soft velvety look, while little purple clouds
of haze settled in the hollows and rifts, fringing with tender grays the
long serrated ridges as they descended to the plain. As the sun went
down the single huge obelisk of Pilot Mountain seemed to be slowly
growing upward out of the gathering shadows below. Presently, as the sun
fell lower, the base of the mountain being swarthy with the growing
nightfall, all of a sudden the upper half of the bleak cone yet in
sunshine cast upward, athwart the blue sky, upon the moisture
precipitated by the falling temperature, a great dark, broadening shaft
of shadow, keen-edged and sombre, and spreading far away into
measureless space--a sight indescribably strange and solemn.

The next day's ride down Clarke's Fork still gave us morass and mud and
bad trails, with the same wonderful views in the distance of snow-clad
hills, and, nearer, brown peaks and gray, with endless limestone dikes.
We camped at twelve on Crandall's Creek, a mile from the main branch of
Clarke's Fork of the Yellowstone, and learned from the guides that no
fish exist in these ample waters. The doubts I at first had were
lessened after spending some hours in testing the matter. Strange as it
may seem, and inexplicable, I am disposed to think the guides are right.
We saw two "cow-punchers," who claimed to be starving, and were
questioned with some scepticism. In fact, every stranger is looked after
sharply with the ever-present fear of horse-thieves and of the
possibility of being set afoot by a night-stampede of the stock. Our
hunting-parties were still out when I started next morning at 8.30 to
climb a huge butte opposite our camp. I reached the top at about twelve,
and found on the verge of a precipice some twenty-five hundred feet
above the vale a curious semicircle of stones--probably an Indian
outlook made by the Nez Perces in their retreat. Sitting with my back
against it, I looked around me. A doe and fawn leapt away, startled from
their covert close by. Never, even in the Alps, have I so felt the sense
of loneliness--never been so held awestruck by the silence of the hills,
by the boundlessness of the space before me. No breath of air stirred,
no bird or insect hovered near. Away to the north-west Pilot and Index
rose stern and dark; across the valley, to the north, out of endless
snow-field