Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/49

 in a saddle of the Wapiti Mountains, leading down Seclusion Creek to the government trail on the Shoshone, the one dim tentacle of civilization stretching forth into the hills; fifty miles to the west, across Lake Yellowstone, was the Thumb Station on the Park road. Between, there was not even a path except the network of game trails worn by countless generations of elk and deer.

Moran prodded a white skull from the grass with his toe.

“Here’s one of the lost herd, Flash,” he said. “This is where they died. Their skulls are scattered through here for a hundred miles. And you come straight down from the buffalo grays that followed them into the hills.”

“You’re nearly the last of your line. I doubt if you ever hear that note you listen for every night. I’m afraid the rest of your breed have followed the lost herd, Flash, and have gone this route, and he tapped the skull with his toe.

The whole country here was high, yet the hills were not nearly so lofty as the distant ranges that ringed them in. The bald ridges that branched off from the divide on which they stood were barely above timberline.