"Shall I call him down?" inquired Dale.
For once Bo did not find her voice.
"Let us--get a little more used to him--at a distance," replied Helen, with a little laugh.
"If he comes to you, just rub his head an' you'll see how tame he is," said Dale. "Reckon you're both hungry?"
"Not so very," returned Helen, aware of his penetrating gray gaze upon her.
"Well, I am," vouchsafed Bo.
"Soon as the turkey's done we'll eat. My camp is round between the rocks. I'll call you."
Not until his broad back was turned did Helen notice that the hunter looked different. Then she saw he wore a lighter, cleaner suit of buckskin, with no coat, and instead of the high-heeled horseman's boots he wore moccasins and leggings. The change made him appear more lithe.
"Nell, I don't know what you think, but I call him handsome," declared Bo.
Helen had no idea what she thought.
"Let's try to walk some," she suggested.
So they essayed that painful task and got as far as a pine log some few rods from their camp. This point was close to the edge of the park, from which there was an unobstructed view.
"My! What a place!" exclaimed Bo, with eyes wide and round.
"Oh, beautiful!" breathed Helen.
An unexpected blaze of color drew her gaze first. Out of the black spruce slopes shone patches of aspens, gloriously red and gold, and low down along the edge of timber troops of aspens ran out into the park, not yet so blazing as those above, but purple and yellow and white in the sunshine. Masses of silver spruce, like trees in moonlight, bordered the park, sending out here and there an isolated tree, sharp as a spear, with under-branches close to the ground. Long golden-green grass, resembling half-ripe wheat, covered the entire floor of the park, gently waving to the wind. Above sheered the black, gold-patched slopes, steep and unscalable, rising to buttresses of dark, iron-hued rock. And to the east circled the rows of cliff-bench, gray and old and fringed, splitting at the top in the notch where the lacy, slumberous waterfall, like white smoke, fell and vanished, to reappear in wider sheet of lace, only to fall and vanish again in the green depths.
It was a verdant valley, deep-set in the mountain walls, wild and sad and lonesome. The waterfall dominated the spirit of the place, dreamy and sleepy and tranquil; it murmured sweetly on one breath of wind, and lulled with another, and sometimes died out altogether, only to come again in soft, strange roar.