CHAPTER XIX
Over in the eastern sky above the dim Black Hills the velvety blackness that is night in the Big Country began insensibly to grow less like the nap on a black butterfly's wing and the stars that had been burning there, each suspended by invisible cords from the vault of heaven, retreated and became one with the flatness of the sky. The pallid east flushed its first harebell pink while all the remaining sweep of celestial lights glowed as if night were to be eternal. Bit by bit the blot of the Big Country became a blur; the blur took dim form. Hills rose from nothingness. Buttes were conjured out of the void. The long sleepy waves of the divides stirred under the first breath of dawn, their frozen tides restless to be freed.
Deeper flushed the pink in the east. Down in the line of alders that marked the course of a stream faint chitterings and flutterings betokened the waking of the wilderness things.
