e swung himself into the saddle with ten
miles of rough country to negotiate, and the trail's difficulties in
nowise lessened his mental discontent. For the first time he was
resenting morosely the necessity of preparing his own supper at the end
of his journey, and he was nowise gentle in the roping of a fresh mount
for the morrow's work on his arrival at the outlying camp, where he ate
perfunctorily and without gust; despite his harsh fatigue a great
restlessness sent him wide, with pipe in mouth, into the stellar
splendor that beatifies every clear Colorado night.

The thin, pure air was surcharged with ozone and delicately perfumed
with the aroma of the lemonia crushing beneath his feet. A big white
moon topped the far-off crests of the Continental Divide, silvering the
cottonwood fringe of the creek bank and transmuting the dull lead of the
sagebrush waste into molten silver and liquid pearl. High up the aspens
were a shimmering sea of aquamarine, and the snow fields at the foot of
the moon were scintillating masses of opal; the cloudless sky above was
a shield of steel-blue sapphire emblazoned with diamond stars. The
sanctity of the profound solitude was as yet unbroken by the inevitable
wolf wails; the tender benediction of a supernal beauty was over all;
and everywhere, save in the hot heart of Ken Douglass, was a great
Peace.

Unseeing the glory spread about him, he tramped far into the night, torn
by conflicting emotions, none of which could he analyze. He was
conscious only of a great Desire whose inchoateness maddened and
bewildered him, and he stumbled blindly through the mazes of his
uncertainty, falling over the truth at every turn but never once
realizing it. Vainly he evoked all the logic and reason at his command,
but the analogies of a by no means inconsiderable experience failed him
utterly. It was ordinarily characteristic of him to arrive at
conclusions with a bound where he himself was the object under
consideration, but to-night his powers of concentration were strangely
deficient and he chafed as much under the sense of indecision as he did
over his inability to diagnose his ailment.

"What's the matter of me, anyhow?" he ruminated, lapsing whimsically
into the range vernacular which he seldom affected. "Here I've been
riding circle on myself all day and haven't rounded in even a sick
maverick. I reckon I'm losing my grip on myself--and that's a bad sign.
Guess I'm herding by my lonely too mu