Venters surmised this much of the change in him—­idleness had passed; keen, fierce vigor flooded his mind and body; all that had happened to him at Cottonwoods seemed remote and hard to recall; the difficulties and perils of the present absorbed him, held him in a kind of spell.

First, then, he fitted up the little cave adjoining the girl’s room for his own comfort and use.  His next work was to build a fireplace of stones and to gather a store of wood.  That done, he spilled the contents of his saddle-bags upon the grass and took stock.  His outfit consisted of a small-handled axe, a hunting-knife, a large number of cartridges for rifle or revolver, a tin plate, a cup, and a fork and spoon, a quantity of dried beef and dried fruits, and small canvas bags containing tea, sugar, salt, and pepper.  For him alone this supply would have been bountiful to begin a sojourn in the wilderness, but he was no longer alone.  Starvation in the uplands was not an unheard-of thing; he did not, however, worry at all on that score, and feared only his possible inability to supply the needs of a woman in a weakened and extremely delicate condition.

If there was no game in the valley—­a contingency he doubted—­it would not be a great task for him to go by night to Oldring’s herd and pack out a calf.  The exigency of the moment was to ascertain if there were game in Surprise Valley.  Whitie still guarded the dilapidated rabbit, and Ring slept near by under a spruce.  Venters called Ring and went to the edge of the terrace, and there halted to survey the valley.

He was prepared to find it larger than his unstudied glances had made it appear; for more than a casual idea of dimensions and a hasty conception of oval shape and singular beauty he had not had time.  Again the felicity of the name he had given the valley struck him forcibly.  Around the red perpendicular walls, except under the great arc of stone, ran a terrace fringed at the cliff-base by silver spruces; below that first terrace sloped another wider one densely overgrown with aspens, and the center of the valley was a level circle of oaks and alders, with the glittering green line of willows and cottonwood dividing it in half.  Venters saw a number and variety of birds flitting among the trees.  To his left, facing the stone bridge, an enormous cavern opened in the wall; and low down, just above the tree-tops, he made out a long shelf of cliff-dwellings, with little black, staring windows or doors.  Like eyes they were, and seemed to watch him.  The few cliff-dwellings he had seen—­all ruins—­had left him with haunting memory of age and solitude and of something past.  He had come, in a way, to be a cliff-dweller himself, and those silent eyes would look down upon him, as if in surprise that after thousands of years a man had invaded the valley.  Venters felt sure that he was the only white man who had ever walked under the shadow of the wonderful stone bridge, down into that wonderful valley with its circle of caves and its terraced rings of silver spruce and aspens.