Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/24

 HE drizzling rain which began falling as we left the ford continued—well, I believe it continued until the following June. Crawling up the toilsome ascent, we suddenly entered a veritable Black Forest, a vast impenetrable solitude. Like woodland spectres, the fir trees crept out of the gloom, standing in military ranks by the roadside, as if curious to note what manner of ghosts were these, lumbering in their strange craft up through the long green aisles. When halting, as we often did, to rest our tired horses, the silence was absolute. One would not think a great forest could be so breathlessly still. Could there anywhere be noise and tumult? Had not the eternal silence fallen upon the whole world, and we alone escaped the universal doom? It was an uncanny hush, with some thing of foreboding in it.

A sort of unreasoning terror seized me, and I suddenly remembered stories we had been told of the cougar, the coyote, and the wildcat sometimes seen in this green wilderness. You may be sure that I fell a-thinking of them. Were they fond, I wondered, of roasted chicken and shredded wheat? Had they yet