In the glare they saw a giant cottonwood that stood alone in the meadow west of the house reel and sway like a drunken thing and pitch to the earth.

They reached the cottonwoods together and were greeted by a low shout from the girl; she was running out from the shelter, dragging the horses after her.

It seemed indeed hardly to move, reflecting the shadowy cottonwoods like a long, clear, curving mirror which was dimmed only by the breath of the approaching dusk.

These have always been beasts of the open country; but the elk, once so plentiful in the great eastern forests, and even now plentiful in parts of the Rockies, then also abounded on the plains, where there was not a tree of any kind, save the few twisted and wind-beaten cottonwoods that here and there, in sheltered places fringed the banks of the rivers.

Horse and rider skirted the cottonwoods and disappeared in a depression beyond.

We had by this time passed the tree area, and it was only here and there in isolated spots that stunted cottonwoods bordered the salmon streams and scattered patches of alders dotted the mountain sides.

Creepers laced the great cottonwoods, tangled vines crawled about their tall, buttressed roots, and hung in festoons from the giant branches.

Little fires the factory boys had lighted by ancient custom twinkled in the haze and a yellow beam from the veranda windows touched the towering cottonwoods, but all else was dark and the spot was somehow forbidding.