Stone could see ahead and on each side several hundred yards, and presently he
ascertained that the forest floor was not so level as he had supposed. He had
entered a valley or was traversing a wide, gently sloping pass. He went
through thickets of juniper, and had to go around clumps of quaking aspen. The
pines grew larger and farther apart. Cedars and pinyons had been left behind,
and he had met with no silver spruces after leaving camp. Probably that point
was the height of a divide. There were banks of snow in some of the hollows on
the north side. Evidently the snow had very recently melted, and it was
evident also that the depth of snow through here had been fully ten feet,
judging from the mutilation of the juniper-trees where the deer, standing on
the hard, frozen crust, had browsed upon the branches.
The quiet of the forest thrilled Slone. And the only movement was the
occasional gray flash of a deer or coyote across a glade. No birds of any
species crossed Stone's sight. He came, presently, upon a lion track in the
trail, made probably a day before.
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