A ducking did not trouble the ouzels, for as they came out of the water the liquid rolled in crystal drops from their feathers and their plumage was as dry as if it had never been submerged. The wilder and swifter the cold glacier water ran the more the birds seemed to enjoy it.
The nearer I approached the edge of the precipitous walls, enclosing the valley comprising Big Pete’s park, the rougher grew the trail, and as I was picking my way I paused to gaze at the distant purple peaks and watch the sun set in that lonely land as if I was witnessing it for the first time. As my eyes roamed over the stupendous distance and unnamed mountains I felt my own puny insignificance, as who has not when confronted with the vastness of nature.
I turned from my view of the sunset to retrace my steps to the valley, and peeping over the top of a large boulder, saw seated upon an inaccessible crag directly in front of me, a gigantic figure of a man clad in a hunter’s garb, and he was smoking a long cigar!
When I thought of Big Pete’s description of how the Wild Hunter was wont to sit with his long legs dangling from some rock while he smoked one of those unprocurable cigars, and when I realized that the figure before me was fully sixty feet tall, I must confess to experiencing a queer sensation.
It was a shadowy figure yet it moved, arose, held out one hand, and a bird as large as the fabled roc alighted on the wrist of the outstretched hand.
A slight breeze sprang up, the white mists from the valley rolled up the mountainside and drifted away and the man and bird disappeared from view.
It was long after dark when I reached camp and was greeted by my friend and guide with “Gol durn your pictur tenderfut, if it hain’t tuk you longer to get a pesky mess of yaller fish than it orter to kill a bar.”
“Little wonder,” thought I, “that the Wild Hunter used golden bullets in a land where even the fish’s scales seemed to be of the same precious metal”; but I said nothing as I sat down to clean my “yaller trout.”
CHAPTER IX
It was always interesting to me when I could get Pete’s theories and his brand of philosophy on almost any subject and it was my intention that night at supper to lead up to the apparition I had seen on the cliffs that day. With a substantial supper tucked away I was in a better frame of mind to realize that the illusion I had seen was not uncommon in mountain districts. I recalled that I had read of, and seen pictures of, a particular illusion of this nature that is often present in the Hartz Mountains in Germany and I knew full well that the setting sun, the mist and the atmospheric condition had all contributed to throwing a greatly enlarged shadow of the real Wild Hunter onto the screen made by the mist very much as today a motion picture increases the size of the small film image when it is thrown on the movie screen.