upon some place to spend the night, the traveler selected a spot beside the cañon creek, a hundred yards from the road. But even after he had lowered his heavy pack to the ground, he stood for some minutes looking anxiously about, as if still uncertain as to the wisdom of his selection.
Nor was the man’s manner wholly that of inexperience. Suddenly, without thought of his evening meal, or any preparation for his comfort until the morning, he climbed again up the steep bank to the road, where he gazed back along the way he had come and studied the mountain sides with eyes of dread. The man was in an agony of fear. Not until it was too dark to distinguish objects at any distance did he return to the place where he had left his pack and set about the necessary work of preparing his supper and making his bed.
Hurriedly, as best he could in the failing light, he gathered a supply of wood and, after several awkward failures, succeeded in kindling a fire. From his pack he took a small frying pan, a coffeepot, a tin cup, and a meager supply of food. With these, and with water from the creek, he made shift to pre{47}pare an unaccustomed meal. Several times he paused, to stand gazing into the fire as if lost in thought. Again and again he turned his head quickly to listen. Often with a shuddering start he whirled to search the darkness beyond the flickering shadows, as if in fear of what the light of his fire might bring upon him. When he had eaten his poorly prepared supper, he spread his blankets and lay down.
{47}
There was something pitiful in the trivial and puny details of this lone stranger’s camp in the wild Cañada del Oro. There was something sinister in the night life that crept and crawled in the darkness about him. There was something pathetic in the man’s lying down to sleep, unprotected, amid such surroundings.
The mountains are very friendly to those who know them; to those who know them not, they are grim and dreadful—when the day is gone. Night skies are kind to those who love the stars; to others they are heavy with brooding fears. The timid life of the wild places is good company for those who know each voice and sound; to others every movement is a menace, every call a voice of danger—when the sun is down.
Cowering in his blankets the man listened for a while to the strange and fearful things that stirred in the near-by bushes, on the rocky ledges, and on the mountain sides above. He heard the cañon voices whispering, murmuring, moaning. The night
Prev.
Back
Top