Hitting the Trail 



79 



was observed to widen and deepen 

 to the southwest horizon. Up and 

 up, through heavy timber, with many 

 descents into, and ascents out of 

 innumerable ravines the party at last 



Tightening up a pack 



^^.^Stp-Tir^sx^ . 



came to an ascent where the entire troop, to ease their horses, 

 dismounted and went up on foot, to the accompaniment of 

 some panting and jesting at their own weakness by the most 

 short-winded climbers. A clump or two of asters still in bloom 

 were noted in sheltered places, though between the trees, on the 

 other side of the depths that lay upon the right hand, snow, 

 left from the storm of ten days since, was still lying. 



Open hay meadows, fringed with rising heights, dotted with 

 the noble clumps of the nut pine — to the artist's eye one of the 

 most strongly graceful and beautiful of trees — succeeded, always 

 on a gentle upward slope. 



About rose the hills in the golden glow of a slanting sun, 

 below descended the blue depths; and so lost was the artist in 

 his eager contemplation of the beauty about him that it was 

 well for him that, foreseeing his absent-minded weakness, he had 

 been provided with a surefooted and wiseheaded pony. 



Here the colonel, riding fifty yards to the right of the north- 

 ward-tending trail beckoned the artist. The painter man came 

 to the edge of the ridge, and looked. He could not but swing 

 his hat and cheer. Below, blue deeps stretched below deeps to 

 a distant vista of the Madison river basin, whose willow-bordered 

 stream wound as a ribbon of silver through the golden plain, 

 hazily lovely in the diffused light of the afternoon sun. In the 

 far southern horizon floated a noble height of before unseen 

 mountains, luminously blue against a pearl sky. Across the 

 6 



