The truth was that the Colonel’s experiment had seemingly failed: the few days that Hugh had already spent in the far Rockies had wrought no change in him. He had not found Broken Fang—the great cougar that had already won a name through a thousand square miles of Idaho forest—and he was ready to admit to himself, at least, that he had made no real effort to find him. He had fished once, succeeding in breaking a number of expensive gut leaders and high-grade flies in the brush along the stream. The remainder of the time he had lain in camp, wishing he hadn’t come. Fortunately the two weeks were nearly over.
The guide brought his wandering mind back to the disaster of his liquor. “I know where you can buy quart—take place that one I spilled,” the Indian said.
Hugh’s face brightened. “Lead me to it.”
“Just over ridge. Sheep camp there—only one this part of mountains. Herder’ll have extra quart or two.”
Hugh looked at his watch. “We can get over and back by dark?”
“Maybe soon after. Going to be pretty dusky right away.”
The man spoke true. The twilight was falling over Smoky Land. The sun was set, the tall pines seemed to darken above them, the dusk grew and deepened between the distant trunks. The immeasurable silence of the mountain night, broken by such little sounds as only accentuate the hush, was deepening about them.
Hugh had no answer at first. For once no words were at his lips, and it was a good and portentous sign. He stood listening. Perhaps because the visit of the camp-robber had been an impulse to his imagination, perhaps only because the effect of his last drink was dying within him, some little portion at least of the age-old magic of the wilderness twilight was going home to him. Now that his guide’s voice died away, he was a little startled by the vastness of the silence.
Far and wide through the forest the wild creatures were starting forth on their night’s business. But they moved with stealth. Hugh had an instant’s dim realization that thickets moved and rustled in the ultimate reaches of hearing; that dim shadows wavered so far distant that he could not be sure of them. The wilderness forces were coming to life.
He lifted his face. As usual in the twilight hour, the faintest breath of wind came slipping, light as a deer-tread itself, from the further mountains. He saw the two long ridges that enclosed his particular part of the plateau, and the last light of day gleamed on their tall, white, snow-laden peaks. These were the high Rockies; sentinel mountains grand and austere.