182 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



of the slide, I could not tell. Again and again, 

 plaintive, whimpering, but pure and clear ! I gave 

 over my ears and, looking hard at the slide, my 

 eyes fixed nowhere, I watched for motion. Pres- 

 ently, straight in front of me, a little gray form 

 crept over a slab, stopped on all fours, and whis- 

 tled, waited for a moment listening, then disap- 

 peared. The cony ! 



Gone *? I did n't know. I did n't care. I had 

 seen him ; and that was almost more than I could 

 believe. The moment was full, and in it the thing 

 was done. What thing, you ask *? Why, my be- 

 coming a cony, and with him now a dweller in 

 the rock-slides of the black and bitter peaks. I 

 have widened my range by that experience, added 

 to my habitat ; become one of the Boreal animal 

 forms that push southward on these heights far 

 into my Sonoran zone. 



But he had not gone. Keeping as still as the 

 stones, I waited. Presently the plaintive, bleating 

 whistle sounded again from anywhere in the slide. 

 I tried to find the hole into which the cony had 

 disappeared ; but the moment my eyes were taken 

 from any spot, it was impossible to pick it out 

 again. The rocks were rough, rusty chunks, two 



