the two were on the friendliest
terms, and since they were to be somewhere in the same region, the
future offered the most pleasing vistas to both of them. When the
horses were rested and Ben's pipe was out, they ventured on. Following
a caribou trail, they ascended a majestic range of mountains--a trail
too steep to ride and which the pack horses accomplished only with
great difficulty--emerging onto a high plateau of open parks and small
clumps of the darkest spruce. It was, of course, the most scenic part
of the journey; and the inclination to talk died speedily from the
lips.

They rode in silence, watching. Both of them were sure that words, no
matter how beautiful and eloquent, could be only a sacrilege. The very
tone of the high ranges is that of silence vast and eternal beyond scope
of thought, and the only sounds that can fittingly shatter that mighty
breathlessness are the great, calamitous phenomena of nature,--the
thunder crashing in the sky and the avalanche on the slope. The forests
they had just left were deeply silent, but the far hush had been
alleviated by the soft noises of wild creatures stirring about their
occupations; perhaps also by the feeling that the thickets were full of
sound pitched just too high or just too low for human ears to hear; but
even this relief was absent here. The high peaks stretched before them,
one after another, until they faded into the horizon,--majestic, aloof,
utterly and grandly silent.

The snow still lay deep over the plateau, packed to the consistency of
ice, and the marmots had not yet emerged to welcome the spring with
their shrill, joyous whistling. From their high place they could see the
hills spread out below them,--fold after fold as of a great cloak,
deeply green, seemingly infinite in expanse, broken only by the blue
glint of the Agnes lakes, like two great twin sapphires hidden in the
forest. But they couldn't make out a single roof top of Snowy Gulch. The
forest had already claimed it utterly.

This was the caribou range; wherever they looked they saw the tracks of
the noble animals in the snow. Later they caught a glimpse of the
creatures themselves, a small herd of perhaps half a dozen swinging
along the snow in their indescribable pacing gait. They were in fitting
surroundings, their color inexpressibly vivid against the snow, and
Ben's heart warmed and thumped in his breast at the sight.

But the trail descended at last into the great valley of th