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They come to it about the level of the heather, but they have no such affinity for dampness as the tamarack pines. Scarcely any bird-note breaks the stillness of the timber-line, but chipmunks inhabit here, as may be guessed by the gnawed ruddy cones of the pines, and lowering hours the woodchucks come down to the water.
By two and three thousand feet the snow-caps overtop them. It is even possible to wind through the Sierras without having passed above timber-line, but one misses a great exhilaration. The shape of a new mountain is roughly pyramidal, running out into long shark-finned ridges that interfere and merge into other thunder-splintered sierras.
They had now reached a high elevation, but the warmth of the July weather rendered the coolness welcome. The sheep gladly sought out the forest shade or, when they were above the timber-line, rested in the shadow of the high rocks. This rough land seemed to be the favorite place for their sports, and Donald and his father were never tired watching them.
It was all in the day's work of the ranger, but the plainsman behind him turned timorous eyes toward the sky. "It looks owly," he repeated. "I didn't know I was going so high Gregg didn't say the camp was so near timber-line." "You've cut out a lonesome job for yourself," Ross assured him, "and if you can find anything else to do you'd better give this up and go back."
He crunched along over the snow crust which rarely failed him, and though the daylight passed swiftly, the dead-white surface seemed to hold an absorbed radiance and shed it softly. By the time he got down to the timber-line again the moon was up. He left the country of Five Lakes well to his left, ignoring the invitation of the trail beyond down the tall walls of Squaw Creek cañon.
Over the ice-scoured rocks, and above the timber-line, the trail ran around Crater Lake and gained the rocky defile that led toward Happy Camp and the first scrub pines. To pack his heavy outfit around would take days of heart-breaking toil. On the lake was a canvas boat employed in freighting. Two trips with it, in two hours, would see him and his ton across.
"I was over in the Buffalo Hump Country doin' assessment work fifteen hundred feet above timber-line when the last Live One pulled out of Ore City. They ain't been one in since to my knowledge. The town's so quiet you can hear the fish come up to breathe in Lemon Crick and I ain't lookin' for a change soon." "You wait till spring."
"Of course ye must," said Mrs. Duncan. "And without another hour's delay. It's been here two days noo, and she may want it, and be too busy or afraid to come." "But how can I take it?" asked Freckles. "Gang spinning on your wheel. Ye can do it easy in an hour." "But in that hour, what if ?" "Nonsense!" interrupted Sarah Duncan. "Ye've watched that timber-line until ye're grown fast to it, lad.
Here and there is a grassy "bald": a natural meadow curiously perched on the very top of a mountain. There are no bare, rocky summits rising above timber-line, few jutting crags, no ribs and vertebræ of the earth exposed. Seldom does one see even a naked ledge of rock. The very cliffs are sheathed with trees and shrubs, so that one treading their edges has no fear of falling into an abyss.
He had merry blue eyes, and his crown he was holding his battered Derby hat in his hand was as bare as a billiard ball. Below timber-line, as he himself expressed it, he had a brush of close-cut sandy-red hair.
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