ng trail which leads to the River of Darkness and The
Wide Lands Beyond It.

His bridle and saddle were hanging in the barn (they are still there),
silent memorials of the explorations in which he and I had played a
resolute part.

Something grips me by the throat as I remember his eyes,

"Brown, clear and calm, with color down deep,
Where his brave, proud soul seemed to lie."

I recall the first days we spent together, beautiful days in the Frazer
Valley, when jubilant cranes bugled from the skies, and humming birds
moved in myriads along the river's banks--memories of those desperate
days in the Skeena forests, amid dank and poisonous plants--of marches
on the tundra along the high Stickeen Divide--all these come back. I see
him crowding close to my fire, thin and weak.

I relive once more that bitter night on the wharf in Glenora when
(chilled by the cold wind), he first began to cough. I am thinking of
his journey on the boat with me to Wrangell; of the day when I left him
there (the only horse on the coast); of my return; of our long trip to
Seattle; of his trust in me as he faced the strange monsters of the
city; of his long dark ride to St. Paul; of the joyous day when I opened
his prison door and finding him safe and well, rode him forth to the
admiration of my uncles at the county fair. A vast section of my life
faded with the passing of that small gray horse. "Lost my Ladrone, gone
the wild living. I dream, but my dreaming is vain."

My sense of uneasiness was deepened by another warning, a third sign of
decay. One morning my father while apparently in his usual health,
suddenly grew dizzy and fell and as I bent above him he gazed up at me
with an expression which I had never before seen in his face, a humble,
helpless, appealing look. It seemed that he was going as William had
gone.

Happily I was mistaken. His indomitable soul reasserted itself. He
refused to surrender. He rallied. "I'm all right," he said at last, a
grim line coming back into his mouth. "It's passing off. I can move,"
and lifting his arm he opened and shut his hand in proof of it. "I'm
better than a dozen dead men yet."

He was distinctly stronger next day, and when, looking from my window I
saw him going about his work in the garden, bareheaded as was his habit,
resolute and unsubdued, I was reassured, but never again did he move
with the same vigor as before. For the first time he acknowledged his
age.

During all thes