s. There was a camp for them. A lakeside
hotel had been designed and stakes were driven in the ground where its
foundation would eventually be poured. There were infant big-mouthed
bass in the lake and fingerling trout in many of the streams. A huge
Wild Life Control trailer-truck went grumbling about such trails as
were practical, attending to these matters. Yesterday Lockley had seen
it gleaming in bright sunshine as it moved toward Boulder Lake on the
highway nearest to his station.

But that was yesterday. This morning he awoke under a pale gray sky.
There was complete cloud cover overhead. He smelled conifers and
woods-mould and mountain stone in the morning. He heard the faint
sound of tree branches moving in the wind. He noted the cloud cover.
The clouds were high, though. The air at ground level was perfectly
transparent. He turned his head and saw a prospect that made being in
the wilderness seem entirely reasonable and satisfying.

Mountains reared up in every direction. A valley lay some thousands of
feet below him, and beyond it other valleys, and somewhere a stream
rushed white water to an unknown destination. Not many wake to such a
scene.

Lockley regarded it, but without full attention. He was preoccupied
with thoughts of Jill Holmes, and unfortunately she was engaged to
marry Vale, who was also working in the park some thirty miles to the
northeast, near Boulder Lake itself. Lockley didn't know him well
since he was new in the Survey. He was up there to the northeast with
an electronic survey instrument like Lockley's and on the same job.
Jill had an assignment from some magazine or other to write an article
on how national parks are born, and she was staying at the
construction camp to gather material. She'd learned something from
Vale and much from the engineers while Lockley had tried to think of
interesting facts himself. He'd failed. When he thought about her, he
thought about the fact that she was engaged to Vale. That was an
unhappy thought. Then he tried to stop thinking about her altogether.
But his mind somehow lingered on the subject.

At ten minutes to eight Lockley began to dress, wilderness fashion. He
began by putting on his hat. It had lain on the pile of garments by
his bed. Then he donned the rest of his garments in the exact reverse
of the order in which he'd removed them.

At 8:00 he had a small fire going. He had no premonition that anything
out of the ordinary was going to ha