Roger Pocock

“ All along the westward sky glimmered the awakening summits of the Selkirks; eastwards, across the Kootenay trench, the Rocky Mountains hung like a belt of azure mist against the sunrise; but La Mancha, sitting on the verge of that huge precipice behind the cabins, took no thought of the day or of the morrow. A little wreath of smoke rose straight up from his pipe into the thin air, and the awful magnificence of the Alps had no existence for him while he thought of a woman. Her face was before him in a dream—the face of a sweet maid, bright with impudence, a wholesome nut-brown maiden innocent. ”

“ That night, whatever its cost to the master of Lyonesse, we entered the region of Etheric Power, and the beginning of a more spacious age. For so rolls the ordered motion of our race from height to height up the great way towards Heaven. The fences are breaking down, the barriers are conquered, and our horizon broadens as we climb. We hope that the walls of Time and Space shall melt, the skies be torn asunder like a scroll, and when we win to the last heights of human destiny, we shall stand upon white summits, we shall behold the Infinite. ”

“ How can a man keep his head when the world goes raving crazy all round him? You have just to keep on remembering that your eyes have quit being responsible, that your nose is a liar, that your ears are fooled, then keep a taut rein on yourself for fear your wits stampede, and your legs go chasing visions down the trail to death.
That Valley of Central Arizona got me plumb bewildered; a country of bare earth and mesquite brush like mist, with huge big trees of cactus standing in one grove a hundred miles across. ”

“ Up in the black pines it is winter still, but all our towered, bayed, sculptured, sunny precipice is alive with flowers and birds, while the slopes at the foot of the wall are white with the blossom of wild orchards. Here our bench pasture is a little sky with marigolds for stars. Down in the lower cañon the trees are in summer leaf. The canaries are nesting, the humming-birds have just come, the bees are having a wedding, just as Mendelssohn told us, and Jesse and I are quite ashamed of ourselves, because the widow's reproachful eyes have found us out. We are not really and truly grown up. ”

“ Deep lay the snow in Kootenay. All across the prairies the great drifts were like ocean rollers frozen,—against the clumps of timber they were heaped like winter surf, around the cabin curled over to windward like a breaking wave. One could stand upon the comb of that wave, so solid was it; indeed, the Señora La Mancha had chosen the point of vantage from whence to search the trail for some sign of her husband's coming, because he was late afield after stray cattle, and it was long past supper time. ”

“ Why were the chiefs yelling as they closed round me? Like a hurricane, the Piegan warriors, thousands strong, came charging at me, firing at me, swirling round me with uproar, like tumbling waters—distant waters—the rush of some far-away rapids—or rain at night When my head cleared, the head chief, in a blaze of passion, was roaring at the mob: "Silence! Fall back! Who fights my son, fights me!
"Silence! Silence! Hear me! That liar defamed his woman, fouled his own lodge, slandered the holy servant of the Sun, insulted God—and died! ”

“ There are holy saints and scoundrels among adventurers, but all the thousands I have known were fools of the romantic temperament, dealing with life as an artist does with canvas, to color it with fierce and vivid feeling, deep shade and radiant light, exulting in the passions of the sea, the terrors of the wilderness, the splendors of sunshine and starlight, the exaltation of battle, fire and hurricane. ”

“ Rain cried a little, then brushed her eyes with her sleeve. "Finished," she said. "I have worked for our dear spy three snows now, and he needs no more help." She turned upon her pupil.
"And you?" Rising Wolf felt as though Rain's eyes were burning him. "Your soul," she said, "has come alive so quickly."
They were crossing the evening westward into the night and Rain drove her lesson home to the white man's heart:
"Faith in all that is good is the soul's life, like sunshine to a plant, but doubt is the bleak wind which stops its growth, denial the frost which nips and withers it." ”

“ Margaret, standing between the glow of the lamps and the soft pallor of the night, robed in a texture of changing glory like the wings of angels, looked up to the smiling face of the dead moon. Must she, like that poor servant of the world, the life fire quenched and hope utterly perished, move on an orbit of unending patience, and by a borrowed light from Heaven shine for cold duty's sake before mankind? So many a woman with a broken heart has made of her living death a light for men. ”