58 Rod, Gun, and Palette in the High Rockies 



stress of weather. The mail reaches Grayling from Monida, 

 Montana, ninety miles distant by stage and special mail drivers 

 three times a week (in good weather). Monida being the nearest 

 railroad postoffice to which there is train service twelve months 

 in the year. A temperature of fifty degrees below zero is not 

 uncommon, and though in still, dry air, more common in the 

 winter than not, this is bearable, yet the raging fierceness of a 

 storm driven by the thousand-edged wind that comes off the 

 heights about the valley is something the flat-dweller, wrapped 

 about in artificial warmth, can only dimly surmise. 



Walking back to camp, the artist made note of the changing 

 beauty of color shown by the sagebrush. In a steady light locally 

 of a pale greenish gray, in wide areas it responds to the sky above, 

 and the changing angle of the sunlight almost as water does. 

 In late afternoon with the sun an hour from the Occident, the upper 

 tufts, heaving with the contour of the ground beneath in wave-like 

 rolls, take numberless tones of golden light, from the palest lemon 

 to the ruddiest orange, bathing the middle distance of the prairie 

 in a floating haze of light, broken as it comes near the eye by the 

 violet bloom of the shadowed side of the clumps. A little nearer 

 yet, and the separate clumps show a golden crest upon a lovely 

 violet tone of under foliage, below which again the contorted stems, 

 in their twistings flowing with a marked and typical rhythm, tell 

 in still deeper violet grays against the brightly tawny dried grass 

 between. Not uncommonly when a lemon light falls from the 

 sky, foliage tufts and stems in shadow will show in light and dark 

 tones of red-violet gray. Far off, in the extreme distance, it lies 

 under the sky in pale fields and strips of grayish green, sometimes 

 inclining distinctly to pale blue. The upstanding dried flower 

 stems, visible only near at hand, take always the color of the 

 dominant light. 



Arrived back at camp it was found that the sportsmen 

 were out with rod and line just before sundown, but without 

 results. There was teal for dinner, the table graced with gerani- 

 ums sent to the camp by Mrs. Kerzenmacher, with her com- 

 pliments. Afterward came letters, and then the sempiternal 

 game of rhum, at which Art effected several ponderous coups, 

 and so to bed, with coyotes yelling on all thirty-six points of 

 the compass. 



