108 MOUNTAINS

the wet leaves of raspberry and strawberry plants. Tall clumps of golden-rod stood round the camp site, and aspens dappled the tent with the shadows of their restless leaves. The Stikine flowed past over the bank, lapping at the boulders. Behind the bench the timbered slope rose steeply, cut slant- wise by a narrow, stony trail.

The pack-horses wandered through the golden- rod and under the boughs of the aspens, finding temporary comfort and pleasure as their quivering muzzles moved in succulent grass. Lily stood dreamily beside the tent, eating a lupine-leaf, while someone strapped a rifle to her saddle. She had ceased to sigh. Her dark flanks shone in the watery sunlight.

But the peace was transitory. Before long there were harsh calls and exhortations. Grass and lupines must be left behind among the gently rustling trees, and the patient feet of horses must plod up the stony trail; up, up through the spruce toward the round sweep of the summit, and beyond the summit to south and east for days and weeks into a country too distant to be contemplated by a mind that still mourned the lupine-leaves of the pleasant river bench.