and me, and Lee
and Nielsen, he led us over to what he called Horton Thicket. Never
would I forget my first sight of that immense forest-choked canyon.
It was a great cove running up from the basin into the rim. Craggy
ledges, broken, ruined, tottering and gray, slanted down into this
abyss. The place was so vast that these ledges appeared far apart, yet
they were many. An empire of splintered cliff!
High up these cracked and stained walls were covered with lichens,
with little spruces growing in niches, and tiny yellow bushes. Points
of crumbling rock were stained gold and russet and bronze. Below the
huge gorge was full of aspens, maples, spruces--a green, crimson,
yellow density of timber, apparently impenetrable. We were accorded
different stations on the ledges all around the cove, and instructed
to stay there until called by four blasts from a hunting horn. My
point was so far from R.C.'s, across the canyon, that I had to use my
field-glass to see him. When I did look he seemed contented. Lee and
Nielsen and Haught I could not see at all. Finding a comfortable seat,
if hard rock could ever be that, I proceeded to accept my wait for
developments. One thing was sure--even though it were a futile way to
hunt it seemed rich in other recompense for me. My stand towered above
a vast colorful slope down which the wind roared as in a gale.
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