CHAPTER XXXI
NIGHT
Evening, placidly content with the warm silence, departed lingeringly. Belated insects still buzzed in the wayside foliage. A bee, overtaken in his busy pilfering by the obliterating dusk, hung on a nodding mountain flower, unfearful above the cañon's emptiness. An occasional bird ventured a boldly questioning note that lingered unfinished in the silence of indecision. Across the road hopped a young rabbit, a little rounded shadow that melted into the blur of the sage. A cold white fire, spreading behind the purple-edged ranges, enriched their somber panoply with illusive enchantments, ever changing as the dim effulgence drifted from peak to peak. Shadows grew luminous and were gone. In their stead wooded valleys and wide cañons unfolded to the magic of the moon. There was no world but night and imagination.
With many rustlings the quail huddled in the live-oaks, complaining querulously until the darkness silenced them.
The warm, acrid fragrance of the hills was drawn intermittently across the cooler level of the shadowy road. A little owl, softly reiterating his cadences of rue, made loneliness as a thing tangible, a thing groping in the dusk with velvet hands.
Then came that hush of rest, that pause of preparation, as though night hesitated to awaken her countless myrmidons. With the lisping of invisible leaves the Great Master's music-book unfolded. That low, orchestral "F"—the dominant note of all nature's melodies—sounded in timorous unison—an experimental murmuring. Repeated in higher octaves, it swelled to shrill confidence, then a hundred, then myriad invisibles chanted to their beloved night or gossiped of the mystery of stars.
Then Night crept from the deep, cool cañons to the starlit peaks and knelt with her sister hill-folk, Silence and Solitude; knelt, listening with bowed head to that ancient antiphony of thankfulness and praise; then rose and faced the western sea.
Boyar, the black pony, shook his head with a silvery jingling of rein-chains. His sleek flanks glistened in the moonlight. Louise curbed him gently with hand and voice as he stepped through the wide gateway of the ranch.