tains, now
dimly visible. Behind us stretched the prairie, sweeping out level to
the sky and cut by the winding coulee of the Swan. Great long shadows
from the hills were lying upon its yellow face, and far at the distant
edge the gray haze was deepening into purple. Before us lay the hills,
softly curving like the shoulders of great sleeping monsters, their tops
still bright, but the separating valleys full of shadow. And there, far
beyond them, up against the sky, was the line of the mountains--blue,
purple, and gold, according as the light fell upon them. The sun had
taken his plunge, but he had left behind him his robes of saffron and
gold. We stood long without a word or movement, filling our hearts with
the silence and the beauty, till the gold in the west began to grow dim.
High above all the night was stretching her star-pierced, blue canopy,
and drawing slowly up from the east over the prairie and over the
sleeping hills the soft folds of a purple haze. The great silence of the
dying day had fallen upon the world and held us fast.

"Listen," he said, in a low tone, pointing to the hills. "Can't you
hear them breathe?" And, looking at their curving shoulders, I fancied I
could see them slowly heaving as if in heavy sleep, and I was quite sure
I could hear them breathe. I was under the spell of his voice and his
eyes, and nature was all living to me then.

We rode back to the Stopping Place in silence, except for a word of mine
now and then which he heeded not; and, with hardly a good night, he
left me at the door. I turned away feeling as if I had been in a strange
country and among strange people.

How would he do with the Swan Creek folk? Could he make them see the
hills breathe? Would they feel as I felt under his voice and eyes? What
a curious mixture he was! I was doubtful about his first Sunday, and was
surprised to find all my indifference as to his success or failure gone.
It was a pity about the baseball match. I would speak to some of the men
about it to-morrow.

Hi might be disappointed in his appearance, but, as I turned into my
shack and thought over my last two hours with The Pilot and how he had
"got" old Latour and myself, I began to think that Hi might be mistaken
in his measure of The Pilot.

CHAPTER V

FIRST BLOOD

One is never so enthusiastic in the early morning, when the emotions are
calmest and the nerves at their steadiest. But I was determined to try
to have the baseball m