k on the pillow at precisely the moment of Douglass's line
assumption of indifference, and fell asleep.

But out in the kitchen an old woman was awkwardly stroking the head of
an antelope kid. "I wonder ef I done right?" she mumbled. "I wonder!"

CHAPTER VII

BELSHAZZAR

In October the Colorado mountain lands are very beautiful. They lack, it
is true, the gorgeous coloring of the eastern Indian summer, with its
beauty of scarlets, crimsons, ochres, maroons and mauves, the western
color scheme being in half-tints of low tone. The barbaric splendor of
the eastern autumn is here reflected only in the evening skies and in
the glowing grays, blues, browns, blacks, bronzes and golds of the eyes,
hair and faces of the hardy mountaineers.

Over the foothills and valleys are spread tenderly the more delicate
tints of the Master's palette; the enveiling haze is golden instead of
purple, the tints of verdure and earth are softly subdued and blend
together with all the exquisite harmony of an old Bokhara rug. Even the
once-disfiguring alkali barrens appeal to the eye now, their velvet
cloaks of ash-of-roses contrasting most agreeably with the delicate
olive-grays and heliotropes of the sage and rabbit brush. Here and there
a belated Indian-shot flaunts its brilliant lance and over yonder a
cactus masks its treachery with a blush; an occasional larkspur or
gentian raises blue eyes from the gentle hill slopes, and down on the
plains the martial Spanish-bayonet parades its oriflamme. The whole
landscape has an underlying wash of burnt sienna, glowing warmly through
the superimposed color.

The forests are mysterious with silent flitting mouse-blue and
gray-tawny shadows, and the dim trails and passes are incised with the
quaint hieroglyphics which tell the story of the migrant deer. The oily
black-green splashes of spruce and fir, the silvery valance of the
aspens, and the ermine of the snow coronal against the puce of
protruding peaks in the higher ranges are the only decided colors in
mass. Of early mornings the mountain bases in the distances are billows
of smoked-pearl mist; as the light strengthens and the temperature
rises, the mist rises with it, dissipating gradually into thin wreaths
of dainty rose-pink, faint orange--and nothingness. In the as yet
undisturbed shadows the bold cliffs suggest to the imaginative mind
aggregations of uncut crystals; higher up, where they catch the downward
reflected rays of the wa