Lying there, I could smell the smoke of the dying fire, see the stars through the tops of the pines, and hear the wind along the ranges. The moon came up and, off to the west, I could see the towering, snow-capped peaks of the Needle Mountains.
Suddenly I sat up. 'Cap!' I whispered. 'You hear that?'
'I hear it.'
'Sounds like somebody crying.' I got up and pulled on my boots. The sound had died away, but it seemed to have come from somewhere upwind of us.
We walked to the edge of the trees and listened, but we heard it no more. Putting my hands to my mouth, I called, not too loud. 'Come on into camp! No use to be out there alone!'
'How do you know it's alone?' Cap asked mildly. 'Come on back to sleep. You believe in ha'nts? A trick of the wind, that's all.'
I heard no further sound, so I followed Cap and turned in. And, although I lay awake for what seemed like long hours, I heard nothing more.
Maybe it was, like Cap suggested, a trick of the wind. But I didn't believe it.
Chapter VIII
Nor was it a trick of the wind. Somewhere in those mountains I knew there was something... or somebody. ,..
When daylight came I was high in the hills. There was no trail where I rode. To the south there was, but I had switched off. I rode up into the trees, then got down from my horse and switched to moccasins. I went back over my tracks and smoothed them out. Then I mounted up again and headed higher.
Pines grew thick, giving way to spruce. Sometimes I was weaving among trees so close there was scarce room to pass, and half the time I was bent down low to get under branches, or was walking on the soft pine needles and leading that appaloosa.
It was in my mind that I would come out on the ridge not far from that first keyhole pass, and it worked out that way. I found myself on a crest where I could see far and away in all directions.
To the north a huge peak called Storm Bong shouldered against the bright sky, with sunlight on the snow. The canyon of the Vallecitos, through which I'd climbed, fell away steeply below me, and on my right I could look for miles over some of the most rugged country I ever saw.
I rode into the high valley where that ghost lake was. It looked unchanged until I got near it. My old trail was partly covered over by water. There had been rains since my last trip, and the lake was acres larger despite the run-off.
The trail down the chute was about the same. Maybe there was a mite more water over the trail, but not enough to interfere. Riding into my lonely valley, I felt like I was coming home.
First off, I checked the tree where I had left the meat hanging. The meat was gone, but there were no bones about, as there would have been if a wild animal had pulled it down. If there had been any tracks the rain had beat them out.
Next I went on to the mine, and scouted around. I left everything as it was, only I staked a claim, marking down its limits on a piece of tanned hide so's I'd have a map if it came to trouble.
Then I set out to scout that valley, for it was in my mind that there must be an easier way out. And I discovered that the stream flowing down the chute actually flowed north. Then it took a sharp bend to the west and flowed down from the mountain to join the Vallecitos. For the first time I realized that the stream beside which Cap and I had camped was not the one that fell down the chute.
A dim trail, maybe left by ancient Indians, headed off to the east, and far off I could see several other high lakes. And, riding up through the trees to the ridge top, where I could look the country over, I found that across the valley and beyond a ridge was still another long, high valley. Through it a stream flowed almost due north.
Among the trees that lined the ridges which bordered these valleys there was some grass, but in the valley bottoms there were meadows, rich and green. Remembering the short-grass range country of Texas and the high plains, I thought what magnificent summer range these high valleys would make.
But my concern now was to find a new trail down to the Vallecitos and, if possible, to learn who lived up here and had taken my meat.
Riding north, I looked along the ridge toward the end. The valley seemed to be completely enclosed but, farther on, I discovered that it took a sharp turn, narrowed, and came to an end in a wall of forest.
It was there, under the trees, that I found a fresh footprint.
Dismounting, I followed the faint tracks. Here and there grass was still pressed down, so the trail must have been made while the dew was on it, early that very morning. Suddenly I found a snare. Here there were several footprints, but no blood and no hair., so evidently the snare had caught nothing. Squatting on my heels, I studied it. Cunningly done, it resembled no Indian snare I had seen.
I walked my horse across the high meadow that lay beyond the curtain of trees. The ground was nigh covered by alpine gold-flower, bright yellow, and almighty pretty to look at. And along some of the trickles running down from the melting snow a kind of primrose was growing.
The trees were mostly blue spruce, shading off into aspen and, on the high ridges above timber-line, there were a few squat bristle-cone pines, gnarled from their endless war with the wind.
A couple of times I found where whoever it was I was trailing had stopped to pick some kind of herb out of the grass, or to drink at a stream.
All of a sudden I came to a place where the tracks stopped. Here the person had climbed a big rock, and grass stains had rubbed off the moccasins onto the rock. The meaning was plain enough. He, she, it, or whatever, had caught sight of me trailing it.
From atop the boulder I sighted back down the way I had come and, sure enough, my back trail could be seen at a dozen points in the last few miles.
