earth were empty.

Now, the usual way to climb Cloudy Pass is to take a good businesslike
horse and sit on his back. Then, by devious and circuitous routes, with
frequent rests, the horse takes you up. When there is a place the horse
cannot manage, you get off and hold his tail, and he pulls you. Even at
that, it is a long business and a painful one. But it is better--oh,
far, far better!--than the way we had taken.

Have you ever reached a point where you fix your starting eyes on a
shrub or a rock ten feet ahead and struggle for it? And, having achieved
it, fix on another five feet farther on, and almost fail to get it?
Because, if you have not, you know nothing of this agony of tearing
lungs and hammering heart and throbbing muscles that is the
mountain-climber's price for achievement.

[Illustration: COPYRIGHT BY L. D. LINDSLEY
_Looking southeast from Cloudy Pass_]

And then, after all, while resting on the top of the world with our feet
hanging over, discussing dilated hearts, because I knew mine would never
go back to normal, to see a ptarmigan, and have Mr. Fred miss it because
he wanted to shoot its head neatly off!

Strange birds, those ptarmigan. Quite fearless of man, because they know
him not or his evil works, on alarm they have the faculty of almost
instantly obliterating themselves. I have seen a mother bird and her
babies, on an alarm, so hide themselves on a bare mountain-side that not
so much as a bit of feather could be seen. But unless frightened, they
will wander almost under the hunter's feet.

I dare say they do not know how very delicious they are, especially
after a diet of salt meat.

As we sat panting on Cloudy Pass, the sun rose over the cliff of the
great granite bowl. The peaks turned from red to yellow. It was
absolutely silent. No trees rustled in the morning air. There were no
trees. Only, here and there, a few stunted evergreens, two or three feet
high, had rooted on the rock and clung there, gnarled and twisted from
their winter struggles.

Ears that had grown tired of the noises of cities grew rested. But our
ears were more rested than our bodies.

I have always believed that it is easier to go downhill than to go up.
This is not true. I say it with the deepest earnestness. After the first
five hundred feet of descent, progress down became agonizing. The
something that had gone wrong with my knees became terribly wrong; they
showed a tendency to bend backward; they shook