186 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



goat can live, where only the burrowing pocket 

 gopher and rare field mice are ever found, dwells 

 the cony. This particular slide was on one of the 

 minor peaks, loftier ones towering all about. Just 

 how much above sea-level this one was, I do not 

 know, but far up in the arctic-alpine cold in a 

 world of perpetual snow. The conies of Colorado 

 live from ten to fourteen thousand feet above the 

 sea. 



By perpetual snow, I mean that the snow-banks 

 never melt in the shadowed ravines and on the 

 bare north slopes of the peaks. Here, where I was 

 watching, the rock-slide lay open to the sun, the 

 scanty grass was green beyond the gully, and the 

 squat alpine flowers were in bloom, the saxifrage 

 and a solitary aster April and September to- 

 gether blossoming in the edges of the snow just 

 as fast as the melting banks allowed them to lift 

 their heads. But any day the wind might come 

 down from the north, keen and thick and white 

 about the summits, and leave the flowers and the 

 cony slide covered deep beneath a drift. 



Spring, summer, and autumn are all one sea- 

 son, all crowded together a kind of seasonal 

 peak piercing for a few short weeks the long, 



