“As we sat watching the ever-changing panorama of colored clouds, there came to our ears, faintly but surely, that same sad call of the night before.  The great eagle paused a moment in his circling—­then my heart came into my mouth, for as we watched he folded his great wings, tipped his head forward, and began to drop.  I held my breath.  Down, down he came.  I thought he must surely be dashed to pieces on the rocks below.  He was falling directly toward the great dead spruce, and it seemed that nothing could save him from being torn to pieces.  As suddenly as he had begun to drop he spread his mighty black wings and swooped down to the very tree we thought must be his death.  He perched for a second on a dead limb, then flew into a Douglas spruce, emerging in a second with something in his talons.  As he began to rise again, in long, spiral flights, we heard the cry of distress from the unfortunate bird in his claws.  It was the same cry that we had heard in the night.”

“What was the light in the night?  Did you ever find out?” ventured Phil.

“O yes, I forgot to tell you.  It was Daddy Wright on horseback, swinging a lantern.  He had been to the city, and was returning home.  He passed Ben and his friend and nearly frightened them to death.  He was singing as he came up the road, and was keeping time to his song with the lighted lantern.”

“Twenty-five minutes to reach Dad’s!  Come, you fellows—­loosen up your joints.  The climb up the gulch to the Park is a real one, and there isn’t a place in the canyon to camp,” called Mr. Allen, as he started forward at a more rapid gait.

When they reached the farthest point of the big Horseshoe Bend, they stopped to rest a moment before starting up the last long incline to Daddy Wright’s.

“Isn’t it really wonderful when you think of the obstacles men have overcome just to accomplish their desired ends?” asked Mr. Allen as he stood gazing out over the mountains.  “Men have risked their very lives just for the privilege of climbing into these old hills to look for gold.  Many were the narrow escapes from death by starvation or wild beasts that these hills could tell of if they could speak.  Did you ever stop to think that if it hadn’t been for the gold that God hid away here in this Continental Divide, that perhaps the men in the old Eastern colonies would never have crossed over and taken possession of the wonderful Westland.  It was the gold that was hidden under the snow and ice of Alaska that beckoned men northward.  This has always been true.  The prospectors of the Nation have always been its best explorers—­certainly they were its real frontiersmen.  They led and civilization followed.  Think of the thousands of people who endured hardships of which we can not even imagine just to follow westward that trail, blazed by such sturdy old men as Dad Wright and others like him.  I’ve heard Dad tell many a time of that caravan of forty-niners, all their earthly possessions