Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/132

 Down dropped the sun and the quick dark of the Big Country came marching in a wide zone of shadow from the feet of the mountains. Uncle Alf rode on steadily. When his mind was not conning bits of Scripture and automatically pigeonholing them against the exigencies of one of the prophet's extempore sermons, it harked back to idle speculation as to the moving dot seen on the plain; why had not the horseman riding the Sioux Pass trail been met? What could have caused his diversion from the trail here in this country of no habitations?

Much solitude in the Big Country breeds clairvoyance. From the untenanted air, from the whispers of the silver birches in the stream beds come voices of the weird for the inner ear of the man alone. With Uncle Alf, who lived in constant communion with saints and prophets of an ancient day and whose mind was attuned to those rarefied wave emanations which bring a howl from the wolf and a snort of terror from the horse when man senses nothing untoward, there was a strong clairvoyant sense he named a calling. Now, riding alone and in the waxing dark, the man received a calling, warning him that the horseman