Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER II. AS THE SUN ROSE. Do you know the region of the Kootenai that lies in the northwest corner of a most northwestern state where the " bunch -grass" of the grazing levels bends even now under a chance wild stallion and his harem of silken-coated mates; where fair upland "parks'' spread back from the cool rush of the rivers; where the glittering peaks of the mountains glow at the rise and fall of night like the lances of a guard invincible, that lift their grand silence as a barrier against the puny strife of the outside world? Do you know what it is to absorb the elastic breath of the mountains at the awakening of day? To stand far above the levels and watch the faint amethystine peaks catch one by one their cap of gold flung to them from an invisible sun? To feel the blood thrill with the fever of an infinite possession as the eyes look out alone over a seemingly creatureless scene of vastness, of indefiniteness of all vague promise, in the growing light of day? To feel the cool orispness of the heights, tempered by the soft "Chinook" winds? To feel the fresh wet dews of the morning on your hands and on your face, and to know them in a dim way odorous odorous with the virginity of the hills of the day dawn, with all the sweet things of form or feeling that the new day brings into new life? A girl on Scot's Mountain seemed to breathe in all that intoxication of the hill country, as she stood ona little level, far above the smoke of the camp-fire, and watched the glowing, growing lights on the far peaks. A long time she had stood there, her riding-dress gathered up above the damp grass, her cap in her hand, and her brown hair tossing in a bath of the winds. Twice a shrillwhistle had called her to the camp hidden by the spruce boughs, but she had only glanced d...
