rming sun, they are amber and wine-colored
topazes, and on the ice-capped summits they are scintillant as diamonds.
At midday the pure rarified air is a marvel of transparent clarity and
everything is as clear cut as a cameo.

It is not until late in the afternoon that the great mystery evolves.
All of a sudden one is aware of a decided and yet intangible change.
Imperceptibly but surely the temperature falls, the quality of light
alters, the heat shimmer is no more and a golden radiance replaces the
brazen glare of the sun; into the nostrils steals an indescribable
perfume, elusive and infrangible, the brown scent of autumn wafted to
the senses on the cool breath of the frozen heights above.
Instinctively the perceptions sharpen; this is the hour when beast and
bird bestir themselves and the vista is enlivened with a new animation.
Out of nowhere, seemingly, struts a sage hen with her brood; another and
yet another materializes under your feet until it seems as if the very
soil was being transmuted into patches of gray-speckled life. In the
apparent vacancy of that soft-swelling knoll to the west looms up the
phantom bulk of an antelope, disproportionately large and deceptively
black against the sun. A dun-colored heap of trash at the foot of a
sagebrush in the bight of the dry creek-bed below resolves itself into a
very live-looking coyote which blinks yearningly at the unattainable
venison on the knoll above, wistfully licks his chops and slinks evilly
in the wake of the grouse broods.

As the sun dips behind the detached mountain spurs in the west the
shadows grow slightly blue and the high lights intensify. By some
optical necromancy the clouds seem massed in the west, the whole eastern
sweep of sky being an unbroken wash of salmon pink, relieved by tinges
of apple-green at its nethermost edges. Against this tender background
the minutest details of the majestic Rockies stand out with such vivid
distinctness that one gasps with the wonder of it. Long after the low
lands have gloomed these heights glow with a glory indescribable, and
when it has finally passed one feels as though a glimpse of Heaven
itself had been vouchsafed to the soul torn with Life's torturing
skepticism.

But what words can describe, what brush portray the awful grandeur of
the western sky! Before that riot of color the eye falls abashed as did
those of Moses on the mount. The sublimity of it shrivels man's pitiful
egoism until he grovels in