Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/127

 ; its dim traceries through the aisles of the forest knew the lurking figure of Sluefoot Thompson, outlaw and train robber, before he lost his head down near Vernal, Utah. A paradise of hunted men was the Basin; its outpost and strongest citadel was Teapot Spout, just east of where Sioux Pass gives on to the rolling billows of the Big Country.

The Pass trail is a water-hewn alley gouged through the reluctant granite. For miles its tortuous way curves and twists about the shoulders of the mountains, dipping into box cañons where purple shadows clot even at the sun's meridian, rising steeply to skirt the precarious brinks of gorges which roar with the diapason of hidden water. Then the trail launches its culminating surprise. Suddenly the heavy curtains of the hills are parted, and the wayfarer stands upon the very proscenium of the Big Country displayed in its entirety.

A world of crystal light stretching out and out to unmeasured distances; light that is flawless and sparkling as a quartz spear; light which seems to carry a taste like water from a mountain spring. As Noah looked upon a clean, washed world so the rider on the high bib of the Pass's exit sees a universe