The train came to a sliding halt at Deer Creek, paused an infinitesimal fraction of a second, and roared on in its ceaseless journey. That infinitesimal fraction was long enough for Bruce, poised on the bottom step of a sleeping car, to swing down on to the gravel right-of-way. His bag, hurled by a sleepy porter, followed him.

He turned first to watch the vanishing tail light, speeding so swiftly into the darkness; and curiously all at once it blinked out. But it was not that the switchmen were neglectful of their duties. In this certain portion of the Cascades the railroad track is constructed something after the manner of a giant screw, coiling like a great serpent up the ridges, and the train had simply vanished around a curve.

Duncan's next impression was one of infinite solitude. He hadn't read any guidebooks about Deer Creek, and he had expected some sort of town. A western mining camp, perhaps, where the windows of a dance hall would gleam through the darkness; or one of those curious little mushroom-growth cities that are to be found all over the West. But at Deer Creek there was one little wooden structure with only three sides,—the opening facing the track. It was evidently the waiting room used by the mountain men as they waited for their local trains.

There were no porters to carry his bag. There were no shouting officials. His only companions were the stars and the moon and, farther up the slope, certain tall trees that tapered to incredible points almost in the region where the stars began. The noise of the train died quickly. It vanished almost as soon as the dot of red that had been its tail light. It was true that he heard a faint pulsing far below him, a sound that was probably the chug of the steam, but it only made an effective background for the silence. It was scarcely more to be heard than the pulse of his own blood; and as he waited even this faded and died away.

The moon cast his shadow on the yellow grass beside the crude station, and a curious flood of sensations—scarcely more tangible than its silver light—came over him. The moment had a quality of enchantment; and why he did not know. His throat suddenly filled, a curious weight and pain came to his eyelids, a quiver stole over his nerves. He stood silent with lifted face,—a strange figure in that mystery of moonlight.

The whole scene, for causes deeper than any words may ever seek and reveal, moved him past any experience in his life. It was wholly new. When he had gone to sleep in his berth, earlier that same night, the train had been passing through a level, fertile valley that might have been one of the river bottoms beyond the Mississippi. When darkness had come down he had been in a great city in the northern part of the State,—a noisy, busy place that was not greatly different from the city whence he had come. But now he seemed in a different world.

Possibly, in the long journey to the West, he had passed through forest before. But some way their appeal had not got to him. He was behind closed windows, his thoughts had been busy with reading and other occupations of travel. There had been no shading off, no gradations; he had come straight from a great seat of civilization to the heart of the wilderness.

He turned about until the wind was in his face. It was full of fragrances,—strange, indescribable smells that seemed to call up a forgotten world. They carried a message to him, but as yet he hadn't made out its meaning. He only knew it was something mysterious and profound: great truths that flickered, like dim lights, in his consciousness, but whose outline he could not quite discern. They went straight home to him, those night smells from the forest. One of them was a balsam: a fragrance that once experienced lingers ever in the memory and calls men back to it in the end. Those who die in its fragrance, just as those who go to sleep, feel sure of having pleasant dreams. There were other smells too—delicate perfumes from mountain flowers that were deep-hidden in the grass—and many others, the nature of which he could not even guess.

Perhaps there were sounds, but they only seemed part of the silence. The faintest rustle in the world reached him from the forests above of many little winds playing a running game between the trunks, and the stir of the Little People, moving in their midnight occupations. Each of these sounds had its message for Bruce. They all seemed to be trying to tell him something, to make clear some great truth that was dawning in his consciousness.

He was not in the least afraid. He felt at peace as never before. He picked up his bag, and with stealing steps approached the long slope behind. The moon showed him a fallen log, and he found a comfortable seat on the ground beside it, his back against its bark. Then he waited for the dawn to come out.

Not even Bruce knew or understood all the thoughts that came over him in that lonely wait. But he did have a peculiar sense of expectation, a realization that the coming of the dawn would bring him a message clearer than all these messages of fragrance and sound. The moon made wide silver patches between the distant trees; but as yet the forest had not opened its secrets to him. As yet it was but a mystery, a profundity of shadows and enchantment that he did not understand.

The night hours passed. The sense of peace seemed to deepen on the man. He sat relaxed, his brown face grave, his eyes lifted. The stars began to dim and draw back farther into the recesses of the sky. The round outline of the moon seemed less pronounced. And a faint ribbon of light began to grow in the east.

It widened. The light grew. The night wind played one more little game between the tree trunks and slipped away to the Home of Winds that lies somewhere above the mountains. The little night sounds were slowly stilled.

Bruce closed his eyes, not knowing why. His blood was leaping in his veins. An unfamiliar excitement, almost an exultation, had come upon him. He lowered his head nearly to his hands that rested in his lap, then waited a full five minutes more.

Then he opened his eyes. The light had grown around him. His hands were quite plain. Slowly, as a man raises his eyes to a miracle, he lifted his face.

The forest was no longer obscured in darkness. The great trees had emerged, and only the dusk as of twilight was left between. He saw them plainly,—their symmetrical forms, their declining limbs, their tall tops piercing the sky. He saw them as they were,—those ancient, eternal symbols and watchmen of the wilderness. And he knew them at last, acquaintances long forgotten but remembered now.

"The pines!" he cried. He leaped to his feet with flashing eyes. "I have come back to the pines!"

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