Clothes and stage trappings can neither add nor detract from our respect for death. He is the same grim old gentleman, be his mouldy bones naked, or clothed in robes of the most gaudy or brilliant hues. A blue death, a red death or a yellow death is just as grizzly and awe-inspiring as one of any shade of gray. Even a black death excites no emotions not touched by the first name, for it is the dread messenger himself whom we respect and not his fanciful robes of office.

As far as I am personally concerned, I confess that Big Pete’s painful suggestion about the coyotes had more to do with keeping my mouth shut than any terror inspired by the lily-like purity of the garments of the white death; what made my bones ache was the thought of the wolves gnawing them.

Overhead the sun shone with an unusual brilliancy, and the atmosphere had that peculiar crystalline transparency which kills space and brings distant objects close to one’s feet. Where then was the terrible white messenger? Why must my head be muffled like a mummy? Why must I keep my mouth shut, while the curiosity mill within me was working overtime grinding out questions I should dearly love to ask?

Again and again I looked around me to see where this ghostly white terror might lurk, and now, as I gazed at the mountains, I was surprised and annoyed to discover that the distant peaks were gradually disappearing, being blotted out of the landscape before my eyes; a ghost-like mantle was creeping over and enshrouding the mountains.

Like Big Pete, the witch-bear, the ptarmigan and the stinging insects, the mountains themselves had joined in the weird game and were donning their fernseed caps of invisibility. Now the air around and about me seemed to be filled with powdered dust of mica that glinted, sparkled and scintillated in the sunshine. The breeze which was tossing about the bright atoms loosened the handkerchief which swathed my nose and mouth, and I was seized with a violent fit of coughing.

It was no gentle hand which Big Pete laid on my shoulder before he again bound the handkerchief around my face and motioned for me to follow him.

Evidently my guide had been making good use of his time while I was engaged in idle speculation, for he led me to a point about fifty yards from the goat trail where there was a possible place to descend the cliff to a ledge fifty feet below. By this time I had become enough of a mountaineer to follow my guide over trails which a few weeks previous would have seemed to me impossible to traverse, and after a hasty and daring descent we reached the ledge, where I discovered the black mouth of a cavern; into this hole Pete thrust me and led me back some twenty yards into the darkness, ordered me to disrobe to the waist, then he began a most vigorous and irritating slapping and rubbing of my chest; so insistent and persevering was he that I really thought my skin would be peeled from shoulders to waist. At last he desisted and ordered me to put on all my clothes.

“Are you mad, Pete? Has the rarefied air of the mountains upset your brain? If not, will you kindly tell me what on earth all this means and why we are hiding in this gloomy hole?” I asked as soon as I got the breath back in my body.

“Le-loo, you be a baby, and need a keeper to prevent you from committing susancide several times a day. Tenderfoot? Well, I should say so. No one but a short-horn from the East would keep his mouth open gulping in the frozen fog, filling his warm lungs with quarts of fine ice. I reckon it would be healthier to breathe pounded glass, fur it hain’t sharper nor half as cold. Why, Le-loo, tha’ be a dose of fever and lung inflammation in every mouthful of this frozen fog.”He held my face between his two strong hands so that the faint light that filtered through the murky darkness from the cavern’s mouth dimly illuminated my countenance, and as he watched the streams of perspiration falling in drops from the end of my nose his frown relaxed and a broad grin spread over his handsome features.

“You’re all right this time,” he added “I calculate that I’ve melted all the ice in your bellows, so just creep up tha’ and sweat a bit more to make it slick and sartin that we’ve beat the White Death this trip.” I did as he said, not because I wanted to sweat but because habit made me obey the commands of my guide.

Evidently this cavern had been in constant use by some sort of animals as a sort of stable for many, many years, and I have had sweeter couches, but by this time my rough life had transformed me into something of a wild animal myself, and it was not long before I was comfortably dozing. During the time that I slept I was dimly conscious of being surrounded by a crowd of people; as the absurdity of this forced itself through my sleep-befuddled brain and I opened wide my eyes, what I saw made me open my eyes still wider.

I was about to start to my feet when I felt Big Pete’s restraining hand on my shoulder, and not until then did I realize that the cave was crowded with the shaggy white Rocky Mountain goats, and not weird, white-bearded old men. Few persons can truly say that they have been within arm’s length of a flock of these timid and almost unapproachable animals; but we had invaded their secret place of refuge, and they had not, as yet, taken alarm at our presence in their castle. It may be that the frozen fog had driven the goats to the cavern for shelter, and it is possible that never having been hunted by man, these animals feared the White Death more than they did human beings, and did not realize the dangerous character of their present visitors; whatever the cause of their temerity, the fact remains that men and goats slept that night in the cavern together.

I did not awake next morning until after the departure of the goats and opened my eyes to find myself alone in the cavern.

Having all my clothes on, no time was wasted at my toilet, but I made my way directly to the doorway and was gratified to discover that Big Pete was roasting some kid chops over the hot embers of a fire.

After breakfasting on the remains of the kid, Big Pete arose and scanned the sky, the horizon and the mountain tops, and turning to me said, “Now, Le-loo, that Wild Hunter-b’ar-wolf man has fooled us by doubling on his trail an’ as it hain’t him we’re after now but the trail out of the mountains, I mean to go by sens-see-ation, but you must keep yer meat-trap shut and not speak, ’cause soon as I know I’m a man I hain’t got no more sense than a man. I must say to myself, ‘Now, Pete, you’re a varmint and varmints know their way even in a new country.’ Then I just sense things and trots along ’til I come out all right.”

I had often heard of this wonderful instinct of direction, the homing instinct of the pigeon, which some Indians, Africans, Australian black boys and a few white men still possess; I say still possess because it is evident that it was once our common heritage, a sort of sixth sense which has been lost by disuse. That Big Pete possessed this sixth sense I little doubted, and it was with absorbing interest that I watched the man work himself into the proper state of mind.

For quite a time he stood sniffing the air and looking around him while his body swayed with a slow motion. Then suddenly, as if he had seen something or as if answering the call of something, he started off almost at right angles to our trail, acting very much like a hound on an old scent, but keeping up a pace that tried my endurance.

It was truly wonderful the way this man, in a trance-like state, was guided by an invisible power over the most dangerous ground, but no one, after a careful survey, could have selected a better trail than that chosen by Big Pete. On and on we went, scrambling over rock-skirting precipices and crumbling ledges. A dense fog settled around us, making each step hazardous, but with an instinct as true and apparently identical with that of our four-footed brothers, my guide kept the same rapid pace for hours, and then, all of a sudden, came to an abrupt stop.

For several seconds he stood in his tracks, his body keeping the same swaying motion, but after a short while he crept cautiously forward in the fog, with me at his heels, and we found ourselves at the edge of a giant fault, similar to the one in Darlinkel Park, but there was apparently no pass to let us down the towering precipices to the valley below.

“Well, that was a wonderful trip,” I cried.

“Shut up!” shouted Pete savagely, but I had spoken and the spell was broken; reason, not instinct, must now lead us.

Vapor and clouds concealed the low grounds from our view; however, we were determined not to spend another night in the mountains, so while I rested and regained my breath, Big Pete went on to explore the ledges.

Presently my guide hove in sight and motioned me to follow him; he led me to a place where another goat trail went over the edge of the precipice, this time not in ten and fifteen feet jumps, but by a steep diagonal path. Down the treacherous trail we slipped and slid with a wall of rocks on one side and death in the form of a bluish white space on the other side.

As we were clambering carefully around the face of a big rock Pete suddenly whispered that he smelt a “Painter,” and upon peering around the corner we found ourselves face to face with a large cat; the animal was crouching upon a flat-topped projecting stone immediately in our path. That it was not the puma of the low-lands, its reddish-colored coat and great size proclaimed. It was a so-called mountain lion and a grand specimen of its kind.

The cat’s small head lay between its muscular forepaws, its hair adhered closely to its body, its long tail was full and round and waved slowly from side to side, while its eyes gleamed like electric sparks.

We were in a most awkward position; our guns were swung by straps over our backs, so that we might use our hands, and we were clinging to the face of the big rock while our toes were seeking foothold in the treacherous shale of the trail. To loosen our hands was to fall backwards into the bluish white sea of unknown depths, and to retrace our steps was out of the question.

Pete often expressed the opinion that no predaceous creature, from a spider up to a cougar, will attack its prey while the latter is immovable.

As a corollary to this proposition he said that when a person is suddenly confronted by a dangerous wild beast, the safest plan to pursue is to remain perfectly quiet, or, as he quaintly put it, “to peetrify yourself in the wink of an eye.”

Truth to tell, on this occasion I found no difficulty in following his directions. I was “peetrified” by fear; my feet were cold and numb, chills in wavelets washed up and down my spine, a sudden rash seemed to be breaking out all over my body and the skin on my back felt as if it had been converted into goose-flesh.

Had we been able to travel a few feet further we would have both found a comparatively safe footing and had our arms free and a fighting chance with the big catamount in place of hanging suspended to the face of the rock like two big, helpless, terrified bats.