beyond, and from there, as from afar off, he heard the voice of an exhausted river. There was no other sound except the intermittent rattle of his guns in the wagon body, and the knocking of his horse’s hoofs on the road. Not a cloud, not a bird’s wing, nothing moved except his own shadow, black and little, at his feet. He welcomed the magnificent absence of his kind. It was solitude, but it was not desolation. The air was stimulating and vital. The cañon was peopled with curious forms of rock and tree—round towers, banners, and figures which, when confronted, were not figures. Yet at the first glimpse, to his fancy, they took always one shape. Twisted pine, sandstone, shard, the image in his mind flashed into the senseless stuff, animated it and melted. The procession of cliffs separated into high, round hills. Without his realizing, without his seeing how, before his eyes the trick was done. Above these nearer smaller eminences, higher, rockier crests multiplied. Faces of the half-gods in sandstone looked on him humorously from the sky; and far in front between the open gates appeared pale summits and divides, and highest of all, a peak like a little cloud.
It glimmered before him, scarcely seen before it was being shut away. The gates seemed closing upon it. The flank of a hill was gliding across his vision.
7
