He had now passed beyond those points in the range from which he had looked down into this narrow, shut-in world.  Ever more wild and gloomy became the chasm.  At times the two walls of rock seemed almost to meet far above his head; under gigantic, overhanging crags there lurked the shadows of night.  Fascinated by the grandeur and loneliness of the scenes through which he was passing Rod forgot the travel of time.  Mile after mile he continued his tireless trail.  He had no inclination to eat.  He stopped only once at the creek to drink.  And when he looked at his watch he was astonished to find that it was three o’clock in the afternoon.

It was now too late to think of returning to camp.  Within an hour the day gloom of the chasm would be thickening into that of night.  So Rod stopped at the first good camp site, threw off his pack, and proceeded with the building of a cedar shelter.  Not until this was completed and a sufficient supply of wood for the night’s fire was at hand did he begin getting supper.  He had brought a pail with him and soon the appetizing odors of boiling coffee and broiling moose sirloin filled the air.

Night had fallen between the mountain walls by the time Rod sat down to his meal.

CHAPTER XI

RODERICK’S DREAM

A chilling loneliness now crept over the young adventurer.  Even as he ate he tried to peer out into the mysterious darkness.  A sound from up the chasm, made by some wild prowler of the night, sent a nervous tremor through him.  He was not afraid; he would not have confessed to that.  But still, the absolute, almost gruesome silence between the two mountains, the mere knowledge that he was alone in a place where the foot of man had not trod for more than half a century, was not altogether quieting to his nerves.  What mysteries might not these grim walls hold?  What might not happen here, where everything was so strange, so weird, and so different from the wilderness world just over the range?

Rod tried to laugh away his nervousness, but the very sound of his own voice was distressing.  It rose in unnatural shivering echoes—­a low, hollow mockery of a laugh beating itself against the walls; a ghost of a laugh, Rod thought, and that very thought made him hunch closer to the fire.  The young hunter was not superstitious, or at least he was not unnaturally so; but what man or boy is there in this whole wide world of ours who does not, at some time, inwardly cringe from something in the air—­something that does not exist and never did exist, but which holds a peculiar and nameless fear for the soul of a human being?

And Rod, as he piled his fire high with wood and shrank in the warmth of his cedar shelter, felt that nameless dread; and there came to him no thought of sleep, no feeling of fatigue, but only that he was alone, absolutely alone, in the mystery and almost unending silence of the chasm.  Try as he would he could not keep from his mind the vision of the skeletons as he had first seen them in the old cabin.