Apache Kid was looking round and round, his eyes wide and bright.
"I should like to see this in Winter," said he, "when leaves fall and cold winds come."
"There 's no mortal man ever saw this in Winter," said Donoghue, "and no man ever will."
I saw Apache Kid linger, and look on that terrible and awesome landscape, with a half-frightened fondness; and then he cast one more glance at the leaden grey of the lake below and another at a peak on our right and, his bearings thus in mind, led the way downward into that dark and forbidding valley.
I shall never forget the journey down to that lake.
Winding here, winding there, using the axe frequently as the thin trees I mentioned were passed, and we entered the virgin forest below, close and tangled, we worked slowly down-hill; and it was with something of pleasure that we came at last again onto what looked like a trail through the forest. It was just like one of the field paths at home for breadth; but a perfect wall of tangled bush and trees netted together with a kind of tangled vine (the pea-vine, I believe it is called), closed it in on either side.
We were on the track of the indomitable "buck" again, I thought. But it was not so. His trail had kept directly on upon the hill, Apache Kid told me.
"I thought you saw it from the knoll there," he said, and then with a queer look on his face, "but you can't go back now to look on it. Man, do you know that a hunger takes me often to go back and see just such places as that on the summit there? I take an absolute dread that I must die without ever seeing them again. There are places I cannot allow myself to think of lest that comes over me that forces—aye, forces—me to go back again for one look more. I love a view like that more than ever any man loved a woman."
Donoghue looked round to me and touched his forehead and shook his head gently.
"Rathouse," he said: "crazy as ever they make 'em."