He no longer used his compass, but guided himself by a cluster of three gigantic peaks.  One of these was taller than the other two.  As he journeyed, his eyes were always returning to it.  It fascinated him, impinged itself upon him as the watcher of a million years, guarding the valley.  He began to think of it as the Watcher.  Each hour of his progress seemed to bring it a little more intimately to his vision.  From his first night’s camp in the valley he saw the moon sink behind it.  Within him a voice that never died kept whispering to him that this mountain, greater than all the others, had been Marette’s guardian.  Ten thousand times she must have looked at it, as he had looked at it that day—­if her home was anywhere this side of the Campbell Range.  A hundred miles away she could have seen the Watcher on a clear day.

On the second day the mountain continued to grow upon Kent.  By mid-afternoon it began to take on a new character.  The peak of it was in the form of a mighty castle that changed as he advanced.  And the two lesser peaks were forming into definite contours.  Before the haze of twilight dimmed his vision, he knew that what he had seen was not a whimsical invention of his imagination.  The Watcher had grown into the shape of a mighty human head facing south.  A restless excitement possessed him, and he traveled on long after dusk.  At dawn he was on the trail again.  Westward the sky cleared, and suddenly he stopped, and a cry came from him.

The Watcher’s head was there, as if chiseled by the hands of giants.  The two smaller peaks had unveiled their mystery.  Startling and weird, their crests had taken on the form of human heads.  One of them was looking north.  The other faced the valley.  And Kent, his heart pounding, cried to himself,

“The Silent Men!”

He did not hear himself, but the thought itself was a tumultuous thing within him.  It came upon him like an inundation, a sudden and thrilling inspiration backed by the forces of a visual truth.  The valley of silent men.  He repeated the words, staring at the three colossal heads in the sky.  Somewhere near them, under them, —­one side or the other—­was Marette’s hidden valley!

He went on.  A strange joy consumed him.  In it, at times, his grief was obliterated, and it seemed to him in these moments that Marette must surely be at the valley to greet him when he came to it.  But always the tragedy of the Death Chute came back to him, and with it the thought that the three giant heads were watching—­ and would always watch—­for a beloved lost one who would never return.  As the sun went down that day, the face bowed to the valley seemed alive with the fire of a living question sent directly to Kent.

“Where is she?” it asked.  “Where is she?  Where is she?”

That night Kent did not sleep.