Two men were sitting beside a camp-fire at Saddle Pass, a shallow notch
in the lower end of the Sangre de Cristo Range in southern Colorado.
Although it was the middle of June and summer had come to the valleys below, up here in the mountains the evenings were still chill, and the
warmth of the crackling fire felt grateful to tired bodies. Daylight yet
held, although it was fast deepening toward dusk. The sun had been gone
some little time behind the purple grandeur of Sierra Blanca, but
eastward the snowy tips of the Spanish Peaks were still flushed with the
afterglow. Nearby three ragged burros were cropping the scanty growth. Behind them
the sharp elbow of the mountain ascended, scarred and furrowed and
littered with rocky debris. Before them the hill sloped for a few rods
and levelled into a narrow plateau, across which, eastward and
westward, the railway, tired from its long twisting climb up the
mountain, seemed to pause for a moment and gasp for breath before
beginning its descent. Beyond the tracks a fringe of stunted trees held
precarious foothold on the lower slope of a smaller peak, which reared
its bare cone against the evening sky