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.”