This aloneness fell upon them like a thing that had a pulse and was alive.

They crossed the Divide and were in a great sunlit country of amazing beauty and grandeur, with wide valleys between the mountains.

It was July.

From up and down the valley, from the breaks between the peaks and from the little gullies cleft in shale and rock that crept up to the snow lines, came a soft and droning murmur.

It was the music of running water.