Eventually we crossed this ridge, or at least the jungle part of it, and got lower down into hollows and swales full of aspens.  Copple recognized country he had hunted before.  We made our way up a long shallow hollow that ended in an open where lay the remains of an old log cabin, and corrals.  From under a bluff bubbled a clear beautiful spring.  Copple looked all around slowly, with strange expression, and at last, dismounting he knelt to drink of the spring.

“Ah-h-good!” he exclaimed, after a deep draught.  “Get down an’ drink.  Snow water an’ it never goes dry.”

Indeed it was so cold it made my teeth ache, and so pure and sweet that I drank until I could hold no more.  Deer and cat and bear tracks showed along the margin of clean sand.  Lower down were fresh turkey tracks.  A lonely spring in the woods visited by wild game!  This place was singularly picturesque and beautiful.  The purest drinking water is found in wild forest or on mountains.  Men, cities, civilization contaminate waters that are not isolated.

Copple told me a man named Mitchell had lived in that lonely place thirty years ago.  Copple, as a boy, had worked for him—­had ridden wild bronchos and roped wild steers in that open, many and many a day.  Something of unconscious pathos showed in Copple’s eyes as he gazed around, and in his voice.  We all hear the echoing footsteps of the past years!  In those days Copple said the ranch was overrun by wild game, and wild horses too.

We rode on westward, to come out at length on the rim of a magnificent canyon.  It was the widest and deepest and wildest gorge I had come across in this country.  So deep that only a faint roar of running water reached our ears!  The slopes were too steep for man, let alone a horse; and the huge cliffs and giant spruces gave it a singularly rugged appearance.  We saw deer on the opposite slope.  Copple led along the edge, searching for traces of an old trail where Mitchell used to drive cattle across.  We did not find a trail, but we found a place where Copple said one used to be.  I could see no signs of it.  Here leading his horse with one hand and wielding his little axe with the other Copple started down.  For my part I found going down remarkably easy.  The only trouble I had was to hold on, so I would not go down like a flash.  Stockings, my horse, had in a few weeks become a splendid traveler in the forest.  He had learned to restrain his spirit and use his intelligence.  Wherever I led he would go and that without any fear.  There is something fine in constant association with an intelligent horse under such circumstances.  In bad places Stockings braced his forefeet, sat on his haunches, and slid, sometimes making me jump to get out of his way.  We found the canyon bed a narrow notch, darkly rich and green, full of the melody of wild birds and murmuring brook, with huge rocks all stained gold and russet, and grass as high as our knees.  Frost still lingered in the dark, cool, shady retreat; and where the sun struck a narrow strip of the gorge there was warm, sweet, dry breath of the forest.  But for the most part, down here all was damp, dank, cool shadow where sunshine never reached, and where the smells were of dead leaves and wet moss and ferns and black rich earth.