road in a thicket of scrub, looking like white branch coral, I knew not
where. Then we came suddenly on his cabin, and dear old "Ring," white
like all else; and the "ruffian" insisted on my going in, and he made a
good fire, and heated some coffee, raging all the time. He said
everything against my going forward, except that it was dangerous; all
he said came true, and here I am safe! Your letters, however,
outweighed everything but danger, and I decided on going on, when he
said, "I've seen many foolish people, but never one so foolish as
you--you haven't a grain of sense. Why, I, an old mountaineer,
wouldn't go down to the Plains to-day." I told him he could not,
though he would like it very much, for that he had turned his horses
loose; on which he laughed heartily, and more heartily still at the
stories I told him of young Lyman, so that I have still a doubt how
much of the dark moods I have lately seen was assumed.

He took me back to the track; and the interview which began with a
pistol shot, ended quite pleasantly. It was an eerie ride, one not to
be forgotten, though there was no danger. I could not recognize any
localities. Every tree was silvered, and the fir-tree tufts of needles
looked like white chrysanthemums. The snow lay a foot deep in the
gulches, with its hard, smooth surface marked by the feet of
innumerable birds and beasts. Ice bridges had formed across all the
streams, and I crossed them without knowing when. Gulches looked
fathomless abysses, with clouds boiling up out of them, and shaggy
mountain summits, half seen for a moment through the eddies, as quickly
vanished. Everything looked vast and indefinite. Then a huge
creation, like one of Dore's phantom illustrations, with much breathing
of wings, came sailing towards me in a temporary opening in the mist.
As with a strange rustle it passed close over my head, I saw, for the
first time, the great mountain eagle, carrying a good-sized beast in
his talons. It was a noble vision. Then there were ten miles of
metamorphosed gulches--silent, awful--many ice bridges, then a frozen
drizzle, and then the winds changed from east to north-east. Birdie
was covered with exquisite crystals, and her long mane and the long
beard which covers her throat were pure white. I saw that I must give
up crossing the mountains to this place by an unknown trail; and I
struck the old trail to the St. Vrain, which I had never traveled
before, but which I k