building his cabin in the shadow of great peaks._

IV

THE LONESOME MAN

The road that leads to the historic north shoulder of Solidor is lonely
now. The stages that once crawled painfully upward through its flowery
meadows are playhouses for the children of Silver Plume, and the brakes
that once howled so resoundingly on the downward way are rusting to
ashes in the weeds that spring from the soil of the Silverado Queen's
unused corral. The railway, half a hundred miles to the north, has left
the famous pass to solitude and to grass.

Once a week, or possibly oftener, a cattleman or prospector rides
across, or a little band of tourists plod up or down,--thinking they are
penetrating to the heart of the Rockies,--but for the most part the
trail is passing swiftly to the unremembered twilight of the tragic
past. There are, it is true, one or two stamp-mills above Pemberton, but
they draw their supplies from the valley to the west and not from the
plain's cities, and the upper camps have long since been deserted by the
restless seeker of sudden gold.

It is a desolate, unshaded country, made so by the reckless hand of the
tenderfoot prospector, who, in the days of the silver rush, cut and
burned the timber sinfully, and the great peaks are meticulated with the
rotting boles of noble pines and spotted with the decaying stumps of
the firs which once made the whole land as beautiful as a park. Here and
there, however, a segment of this splendid ancient forest remains to
give some hint of what the ranges were before the destroying horde of
silver-seekers struck and scarred it.

Along this trail and above the last vestige of its standing trees a man
could be seen, walking eastward and upward, one bright afternoon in
August, a couple of years ago. He moved slowly, for he was heavily built
and obviously not much used to climbing, for he paused often to breathe.
The air at that altitude is thin and, to the one not accustomed to it,
most unsatisfying. In the intervals of his pauses the traveler's eyes
swept the heights and explored each canyon wall as if in search of a
resting-place. Around him the conies cried and small birds skimmed from
ledge to ledge, but his dark face did not lighten with joy of the beauty
which shone over his head nor to that which flamed under his feet. It
was plain that he was too preoccupied with some inner problem, too
intent on his quest, to give eye or ear to the significance of bir