ngs he had
seen--all ruins--had left him with haunting memory of age and solitude
and of something past. He had come, in a way, to be a cliff-dweller
himself, and those silent eyes would look down upon him, as if in
surprise that after thousands of years a man had invaded the valley.
Venters felt sure that he was the only white man who had ever walked
under the shadow of the wonderful stone bridge, down into that wonderful
valley with its circle of caves and its terraced rings of silver spruce
and aspens.

The dog growled below and rushed into the forest. Venters ran down the
declivity to enter a zone of light shade streaked with sunshine. The
oak-trees were slender, none more than half a foot thick, and they grew
close together, intermingling their branches. Ring came running back
with a rabbit in his mouth. Venters took the rabbit and, holding the
dog near him, stole softly on. There were fluttering of wings among the
branches and quick bird-notes, and rustling of dead leaves and rapid
patterings. Venters crossed well-worn trails marked with fresh tracks;
and when he had stolen on a little farther he saw many birds and running
quail, and more rabbits than he could count. He had not penetrated the
forest of oaks for a hundred yards, had not approached anywhere near the
line of willows and cottonwoods which he knew grew along a stream. But
he had seen enough to know that Surprise Valley was the home of many
wild creatures.

Venters returned to camp. He skinned the rabbits, and gave the dogs the
one they had quarreled over, and the skin of this he dressed and hung
up to dry, feeling that he would like to keep it. It was a particularly
rich, furry pelt with a beautiful white tail. Venters remembered that
but for the bobbing of that white tail catching his eye he would not
have espied the rabbit, and he would never have discovered Surprise
Valley. Little incidents of chance like this had turned him here
and there in Deception Pass; and now they had assumed to him the
significance and direction of destiny.

His good fortune in the matter of game at hand brought to his mind the
necessity of keeping it in the valley. Therefore he took the axe and cut
bundles of aspens and willows, and packed them up under the bridge to
the narrow outlet of the gorge. Here he began fashioning a fence, by
driving aspens into the ground and lacing them fast with willows. Trip
after trip he made down for more building material, and the afterno