appeared to come on its wings, as did faint sounds, not
distinguishable before in the stillness.

Milt Dale, man of the forest, halted at the edge of a
timbered ridge, to listen and to watch. Beneath him lay a
narrow valley, open and grassy, from which rose a faint
murmur of running water. Its music was pierced by the wild
staccato yelp of a hunting coyote. From overhead in the
giant fir came a twittering and rustling of grouse settling
for the night; and from across the valley drifted the last
low calls of wild turkeys going to roost.

To Dale's keen ear these sounds were all they should have
been, betokening an unchanged serenity of forestland. He was
glad, for he had expected to hear the clipclop of white
men's horses -- which to hear up in those fastnesses was
hateful to him. He and the Indian were friends. That fierce
foe had no enmity toward the lone hunter. But there hid
somewhere in the forest a gang of bad men, sheep-thieves,
whom Dale did not want to meet.

As he started out upon the slope, a sudden flaring of the
afterglow of sunset flooded down from Old Baldy, filling the
valley with lights and shadows, yellow and blue, like the
radiance of the sky. The pools in the curves of the brook
shone darkly bright. Dale's gaze swept up and down the
valley, and then tried to pierce the black shadows across
the brook where the wall of spruce stood up, its speared and
spiked crest against the pale clouds. The wind began to moan
in the trees and there was a feeling of rain in the air.