He made his first camp on a stream watering a valley twenty miles
from the railroad. There were Indian tracks on the trails. But he
had nothing to fear from Indians. That night, though all was starry
and silent around him as he lay, he still held the insupportable
feeling.
Next day he penetrated deeper into the foothills, and soon he had
gained the fastnesses of the mountains. No longer did he meet trails
except those of deer and wildcat and bear. And so day after day he
drove his burros, climbing and descending the rocky ways, until he
had penetrated to the very heart of the great wild range.
In all his roaming over untrodden lands he had never come into such
a wild place. No foot, not--even an Indian's, had ever desecrated
this green valley with its clear, singing stream, its herds of tame
deer, its curious beaver, its pine-covered slopes, its looming,
gray, protective peaks. And at last he was satisfied to halt there--
to build his cabin and his corral.
Discontent and longing, and then hate, passed into oblivion. These
useless passions could not long survive in such an environment. By
and by the old trapper's only link with the past was memory of a
stalwart youth, and of a girl with violet eyes, and of their sad and
wonderful romance, in which he had played a happy part.
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