his pack, and proceeded
with the building of a cedar shelter. Not until this was completed and a
sufficient supply of wood for the night's fire was at hand did he begin
getting supper. He had brought a pail with him and soon the appetizing
odors of boiling coffee and broiling moose sirloin filled the air.

Night had fallen between the mountain walls by the time Rod sat down to
his meal.

CHAPTER XI

RODERICK'S DREAM

A chilling loneliness now crept over the young adventurer. Even as he
ate he tried to peer out into the mysterious darkness. A sound from up
the chasm, made by some wild prowler of the night, sent a nervous tremor
through him. He was not afraid; he would not have confessed to that. But
still, the absolute, almost gruesome silence between the two mountains,
the mere knowledge that he was alone in a place where the foot of man
had not trod for more than half a century, was not altogether quieting
to his nerves. What mysteries might not these grim walls hold? What
might not happen here, where everything was so strange, so weird, and so
different from the wilderness world just over the range?

Rod tried to laugh away his nervousness, but the very sound of his own
voice was distressing. It rose in unnatural shivering echoes--a low,
hollow mockery of a laugh beating itself against the walls; a ghost of a
laugh, Rod thought, and that very thought made him hunch closer to the
fire. The young hunter was not superstitious, or at least he was not
unnaturally so; but what man or boy is there in this whole wide world of
ours who does not, at some time, inwardly cringe from something in the
air--something that does not exist and never did exist, but which holds
a peculiar and nameless fear for the soul of a human being?

And Rod, as he piled his fire high with wood and shrank in the warmth of
his cedar shelter, felt that nameless dread; and there came to him no
thought of sleep, no feeling of fatigue, but only that he was alone,
absolutely alone, in the mystery and almost unending silence of the
chasm. Try as he would he could not keep from his mind the vision of the
skeletons as he had first seen them in the old cabin.

Many, many years ago, even before his own mother was born, those
skeletons had trod this very chasm. They had drunk from the same creek
as he, they had clambered over the same rocks, they had camped perhaps
where he was camping now! They, too, in flesh and life, had strained
their ears in