ty-five below.

In the long, soundless nights that had the cold stillness of infinite
space, Bruce always had the sensation of being the only person in the
universe. He felt alone upon the planet. Facts became hazy myths, truths
merely hallucinations, nothing seemed real, actual, except that if he
slept too long and the fire went out he would freeze to death under the
rim-rock.

It was only when he dropped down from the peaks and ridges and began to
follow his own steps back, that he returned to reality and things seemed
as they are again. Then it was not so hard to believe that over beyond
that high, white range there were other human beings--happy people,
successful people, people with plenty to read and plenty to do, people
who looked forward with pleasure, not dread, to the days as they came.

He was so lonely that he always felt a little elated when he came across
an elk track in the snow. It was evidence that something _was_ stirring
in the world beside himself.

One day three deer came within thirty feet of him and stared.

"I suppose," he mused, "they're wondering what I am? Dog-gone!" with
savage cynicism. "I'm wondering that myself."

Whatever small portion of his spirits he had recovered by exercise and
success at his traps, always disappeared again on his return down Big
Squaw Creek. To pass the head-gate and the flume gave him an acute pang,
while the high trestle which represented so much toil and sweat, hurt
him like a stab. It seemed unbelievable that he could fail after all
that work!

When he passed the power-house with its nailed windows and doors he
turned his head the other way. It was like walking by a graveyard where
some one was sleeping that he loved.

Bruce always had been peculiarly depressed by abandoned homesteads,
deserted cabins, machinery left to rust, because they represented wasted
efforts, failure, but when these monuments to dead hopes were his own!
His quickened footsteps sometimes became very nearly like a run.

It was from such a trip that Bruce came back to his cabin after two
days' absence more than ordinarily heavy-hearted, if that were possible,
though his luck had been unusually good. He had a cougar, one lynx, and
six dark marten. Counting the State bounty on the cougar, the green
skins be brought back represented close to a hundred dollars. At that
rate he soon could go "outside."

But to-night the thought did not elate him. What was there for him
outside? What w