118 SUMMER 



of the pile he traveled, nervously, anxiously looking 

 for something for some one, I truly think ; and 

 my heart smote me when I thought it might be for 

 the dead mate whose little bare foot-pads had left 

 the bloody print upon the rock. 



Up and down, in and out, he ran, calling, calling, 

 calling, but getting no answer back. He was the 

 only one that showed himself, the only live one I have 

 ever seen, but this one I followed, as he went search- 

 ing and crying over the steep rock-slide, with my eye 

 and with the field-glasses, until long past noon with 

 a whole camp down the canon looking for me ! 



But they must know where to look. Let them 

 climb out of the canon, back to the top of the world 

 to the cony slide, if they could not wait for me. 



Higher up than the mountain sheep or the 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 towered all about, nor do I know 

 just how high it was, but the cony dwells above the 

 tree-line, up in the Arctic-Alpine Zone, in a world of 

 perpetual snow, 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. 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 



