all our hearts. At any rate
to hear Emett and Jones express regret over the death of the doe
justified in some degree my own feelings, and I thought it was not
so much the death, but the lingering and terrible manner of it, and
especially how vividly it connoted the wild-life drama of the plateau.
The tragedy we had all but interrupted occurred every night, perhaps
often in the day and likely at different points at the same time.
Emett told how he had found fourteen piles of bleached bones and dried
hair in the thickets of less than a mile of the hollow on which we
were encamped.

"We'll rope the danged cats, boys, or we'll kill them."

"It's blowing cold. Hey, Navvy, _coco! coco!_" called Emett.

The Indian, carefully laying aside his cigarette, kicked up the fire
and threw on more wood.

"_Discass!_ (cold)," he said to me. "_Coco, bueno_ (fire good)."

I replied, "Me savvy--yes."

"Sleep-ie?" he asked.

"Mucha," I returned.

While we carried on a sort of novel conversation full of Navajo,
English, and gestures, darkness settled down black. I saw the stars
disappear; the wind changing to the north grew colder and carried
a breath of snow. I like north wind best--from under the warm
blankets--because of the roar and lull and lull and roar in the pines.
Crawling into the bed presently, I lay there and listened to the
rising storm-wind for a long time. Sometimes it swelled and crashed
like the sound of a breaker on the beach, but mostly, from a low
incessant moan, it rose and filled to a mighty rush, then suddenly
lulled. This lull, despite a wakeful, thronging mind, was conducive to
sleep.

IV

To be awaked from pleasant dreams is the lot of man. The Navajo
aroused me with his singing, and when I peeped languidly from under
the flap of my sleeping bag, I felt a cold air and saw fleecy flakes
of white drifting through the small window of my tent.

"Snow; by all that's lucky!" I exclaimed, remembering Jones' hopes.
Straightway my langour vanished and getting into my boots and coat I
went outside. Navvy's bed lay in six inches of snow. The forest was
beautifully white. A fine dazzling snow was falling. I walked to the
roaring camp-fire. Jim's biscuits, well-browned and of generous
size, had just been dumped into the middle of our breakfast cloth, a
tarpaulin spread on the ground; the coffee pot steamed fragrantly, and
a Dutch oven sizzled with a great number of slices of venison. "Did
you hear the Indian c