The motion of all things was a drifting in the heart of the canyon.
Sunshine and butterflies drifted in and out among the trees. The hum of
the bees and the whisper of the stream were a drifting of sound. And the
drifting sound and drifting color seemed to weave together in the making
of a delicate and intangible fabric which was the spirit of the place.
It was a spirit of peace that was not of death, but of smooth-pulsing
life, of quietude that was not silence, of movement that was not action,
of repose that was quick with existence without being violent with
struggle and travail. The spirit of the place was the spirit of the
peace of the living, somnolent with the easement and content of
prosperity, and undisturbed by rumors of far wars.

The red-coated, many-antlered buck acknowledged the lordship of the
spirit of the place and dozed knee-deep in the cool, shaded pool. There
seemed no flies to vex him and he was languid with rest. Sometimes his
ears moved when the stream awoke and whispered; but they moved lazily,
with foreknowledge that it was merely the stream grown garrulous at
discovery that it had slept.

But there came a time when the buck's ears lifted and tensed with swift
eagerness for sound. His head was turned down the canyon. His
sensitive, quivering nostrils scented the air. His eyes could not
pierce the green screen through which the stream rippled away, but to
his ears came the voice of a man. It was a steady, monotonous, singsong
voice. Once the buck heard the harsh clash of metal upon rock. At the
sound he snorted with a sudden start that jerked him through the air
from water to meadow, and his feet sank into the young velvet, while he
pricked his ears and again scented the air. Then he stole across the
tiny meadow, pausing once and again to listen, and faded away out of the
canyon like a wraith, soft-footed and without sound.