He looked lingeringly into the deep shadows and asked: "Anything live
down there?"

"Coyotes and wolves and ghosts."

"Ghosts?" he asked, delightedly. "Do you know, I was sure there were,
and I'm quite sure I shall see them."

Then we took the Porcupine trail and climbed for about two miles the
gentle slope to the top of the first rising ground. There we stayed and
watched the sun take his nightly plunge into the sea of mountains, now
dimly visible. Behind us stretched the prairie, sweeping out level to
the sky and cut by the winding coulee of the Swan. Great long shadows
from the hills were lying upon its yellow face, and far at the distant
edge the gray haze was deepening into purple. Before us lay the hills,
softly curving like the shoulders of great sleeping monsters, their tops
still bright, but the separating valleys full of shadow. And there, far
beyond them, up against the sky, was the line of the mountains--blue,
purple, and gold, according as the light fell upon them. The sun had
taken his plunge, but he had left behind him his robes of saffron and
gold. We stood long without a word or movement, filling our hearts with
the silence and the beauty, till the gold in the west began to grow dim.
High above all the night was stretching her star-pierced, blue canopy,
and drawing slowly up from the east over the prairie and over the
sleeping hills the soft folds of a purple haze. The great silence of the
dying day had fallen upon the world and held us fast.

"Listen," he said, in a low tone, pointing to the hills. "Can't you
hear them breathe?" And, looking at their curving shoulders, I fancied I
could see them slowly heaving as if in heavy sleep, and I was quite sure